


Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by dehautdesert



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Wizards, Angels, Bad Things Happen To Fushimi, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demonic Possession, Demons, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Magic, Self-Hatred, Violence, Warlocks, What am I doing?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:29:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 91,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5606836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mikoto is an angel on Earth; Izumo, Totsuka and Anna are his Nephilim followers, Misaki and the rest of HOMRA are semi-amateur warlocks and Saruhiko is completely fucked.</p>
<p>Munakata? Well, he's something else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fox

**Author's Note:**

> Uh... It randomly came into my head and thought it would be about six thousand words, total. *sigh* I'm in the middle of three other fanfics! Why do I never learn? 
> 
> Anyway, Happy New Years, fellow K fans!

*~*~*

 

Everything burned.

And over the haunting roar of the flames Saruhiko heard Misaki's desperate cries, as he begged the angel not to do this.

It confused him only for a moment, before he realised that it could only mean what was happening was finally real.

For in his nightmares, Misaki only laughed as he burned.

_Ah_ , he thought. _Well, that's at least something_.

 

*~*~*

 

_"Think of it as a range of mountains," Munakata tells him. "Humans find it difficult to imagine a graph with more than three axis. Between the earth and the clouds each peak represents each scale any object in existence can be measured by, and each respective height of any peak the placement of that object on that scale. Every object has an equally long range, but very few have every single peak at the same height as that of any other object."_

_"And what you're saying is, the mountain that runs from good to evil, and the mountain that runs from Heaven to Hell, are not the same mountain?"_

_Munakata smiles._

_"But then," Saruhiko adds, "you would say that, wouldn't you?"_

 

*~*~*

 

There wasn't really any good starting point to describe the engineering of the bottomless pit of a hole Saruhiko had dug for himself. Everything required extra explanation to understand how things had got that way in the first place, right back to the incredibly boring story of his own conception and likely before that too.

But the point from which there was no going back; now, that was an easy one to pinpoint. Saruhiko was no bleeding-heart who'd have described himself as 'doomed from birth', simply because of That Man, after all.

So there he had been, kneeling on the floor of a ruined church—a trio of older and yet far inferior warlocks who had wanted to use the local one unconscious back down near where the entrance had once been. The moonlight through the remains of the glass in its broken iron hold had shone down on the dried out fox's skin in front of him, the blood he squeezed from the dove looking almost black in the small wooden bowl beside him.

Misaki would have punched him for killing the animals alone. Silly Misaki. That was the kind of weak attitude that was going to make it necessary for the other boy to seek the aid of others in order to progress to any higher state of power, and that was what had ruined everything in the end.

Or at least that was what Saruhiko liked to tell himself. There were some moments when he knew it had been right there, in that church, in that cold, in that awful state of fear when he himself had been the one to fire a shot of corruption into his 'everything' and wait for it to rot from the inside out.

Though none of that mattered anymore, if it ever had.

Impatience had been the main source behind his fear, not the doom that he'd been about to throw himself into. Impatience because the moon's zenith hadn't been coming soon enough, and though there'd been no reason, _no reason_ to suspect That Man would do what he'd never done before and seek Saruhiko out instead of slouching around with some whore...

He'd felt as though any moment That Man was going to leap through the holes in those broken windows and shout 'surprise!' like a fucking maniac.

He still felt that way sometimes.

And so his hands had trembled as he'd dipped the hoopoe quill into the bowl and begun to write the Summons. It was strange, how much easier it had been, to use the stag's-bone knife to cut his hand open—even that was something Misaki would have berated him for, squeamish little child—and grasp it around the river stones.

He'd stepped over the sleeping bodies of the other encroachers, heart thundering painfully in his chest. It would have been so stupid, he remembered thinking, for him to have passed out then and there from stress and missed his chance for a full month if those other warlocks hadn't woken up first and decided to use his blood in whatever petty magic they'd been attempting. So utterly stupid.

_This is why you shouldn't do these things alone; stupid monkey!_

No. This had been something he'd truly had to do alone.

The stones he'd buried outside, at each corner of the building, then returned inside for the chant—in perfect time.

Oh, yes. Everything had been perfect in the end. Just as planned. The Latin rolling off his tongue like silk. The easiest incantation he'd ever performed.

So the glare of the moon on the dove's-blood letters had flared until it had hurt to look at, the skin it had been written on had fluttered against the dusty floorboards and flown into the air in front of the altar, and he'd heard a howl—that sounded like the wind at first until, listening to it for what had seemed an era of his thin body shaking in the gathering wind, he'd realised it was human-like voices, screaming.

The paper had twirled around at a ludicrous speed. Some of the blood had been flung in little droplets from it, speckling Saruhiko's face and glasses. He hadn't even dared to wipe it off.

But, just as he had been about to get bored, _it_ appeared.

The Fox Demon.

King with a Thousand Faces.

_Hoarder of Souls._

He had chosen to appear in the guise of a boy around Saruhiko's own age; white-haired and gormless-looking until his warm brown eyes had fallen on Saruhiko, and he'd smiled...

His clothes were traditional Japanese; over-large, ostentatious and decorated with tails of Kitsune whose forms he'd taken after killing them. Though this creature had been young for a demon of his power, he had been brutal; his body-count spoken of much within demon circles. The lesser imps Saruhiko and Misaki had summoned on occasion for experiment had been all too eager to share the gruesome tales.

"Behold," the thing had cried, arms spread wide, "I am!"

_You are indeed_ , Saruhiko had thought with sarcasm he hadn't dared voice. He'd known the demon could have ripped him apart in a second, of course, but for all that he hadn't been overly impressed. The thing had the look of utter insanity in its eyes, and Saruhiko didn't find insanity frightening. He found it pathetic.

Instead he'd only agreed, "You are," and forced himself to kowtow to the creature. That had been the first time he'd noticed the pain from the cut in his hand, he remembered; when he'd put the palm flat on the floor to bow.

"Yes! We are the All-Powerful, the Beginning and the End, the Radiance, the Desire, the Glory!"

"You are," Saruhiko had choked out in response.

"We are the Hoarder of Souls and King with No Colour! We are the Keeper of a Thousand Lost Forms, and God of the Realm of Hell!"

"You are," _definitely not that last one_ , Saruhiko thought, but did not add.

"We are the Darkness and Light, and We are All Things between the two! We are mercy! We are ecstasy! We are the Centre and the Edge and all things are of Us and are Ours!"

"You are," Saruhiko had said, annoyed that the creature was spending so much time on bluster when every minute, every second... what That Man could have been planning...

But the demon had agreed, "I am," and sat back on the altar. "What task have you for me, slave?"

Oh, how it had stung at Saruhiko to be called that by this thing. But he'd had no choice but to accept it.

"This man," he'd said simply, and pulled the picture of Niki from his pocket; a clipping of the bastard's hair taped to the back. "I want him dead."

The creature had extended its claws to take the picture Saruhiko held out to it, glancing it over front and back.

"This man is well-protected from dark magic," it had observed. "But not well enough to subvert Us. What have you to offer in return?"

Saruhiko had to admit, there'd been a slight hesitation. But not long enough to even let the memory of Niki remarking, _"So, you actually have a friend now, do you? Good for you; the more bodies I have to practice on, the better,"_ finish before he offered the only thing he'd had that something like the Fox would have accepted as payment.

"My soul."

He still felt embarrassment, even now, that he'd waited to see whether or not Niki had been serious or just fucking with him when he'd made that offhand remark. Misaki had gone deaf for almost three days after the first 'practice' spell despite the measures Saruhiko had put in place to protect him, and with no idea how or why the affliction had happened it had terrified the boy. Saruhiko would make sure there would be no second practice.

Well. At least the Fox hadn't been one of those demons who kissed you in order to seal a contract.

Though the holes its fangs had made in Saruhiko's neck had never truly stopped hurting after that night.

 

*~*~*

 

_"Thought you were smarter than this, son of mine," Niki laughs, coughing weakly in his hospital bed. It's been six days since the deal was made, and on the seventh the Fox's part of the bargain will be paid in full. "If you were going to give it up for one of Them, you could have at least got more in return than the safety of a loudmouthed shrimp."_

_More laughter. More gasping for breath._

_"What makes you think this had anything to do with Misaki?" he asks._

_Niki grins—demonically, if that's a phrase he can still use under the circumstances._

_"Oh, otherwise you would have done this years ago, my pet."_

_Saruhiko doesn't have to listen to this. He slides off the window sill and heads for the door._

_"Whatever. Enjoy your last night on earth."_

_"Enjoy yours. We'll see each other again, soon enough."_

_When Saruhiko opens the door, there's nothing but fire behind it._

_Then he wakes up._

 

*~*~*

 

"Have you heard about the angel in the city?"

So Misaki had come to bother him with, the better part of a year after Niki had met whatever twisted maker had dreamed him up. So had begun the end.

Oh, he knew it even then. Every time he stood trapped in the furnace of his nightmares the last thing he'd see before Misaki's laughter chased his ashes into consciousness was the tall figure, standing before him, wings outstretched.

Angel's wings. Both Saruhiko and Misaki had been at the warlock game long enough to tell the difference between those and other creatures' on sight, even in shadow. Though back then they'd never seen one in the flesh, such as angels had 'flesh'. Their physical forms were a little different to that of a human.

Saruhiko also knew well enough to know a prophetic dream when he had one burning in his skull; which could be a useful gift for a warlock, and would have been nice to have had before he'd sentenced himself to Hell and made it all but useless.

There was no point in fighting it. His contract with the Fox hadn't had a definitive timescale, the creature would come to collect whenever it suited him and honestly Saruhiko had been surprised nothing had happened for so long.

"I've heard idiots spreading rumours that there's an angel in the city," he said. He read the same line of text from the manuscript in his hands he'd already read three times for a round fourth. "Rumours only idiots believe."

"Hah!" cried Misaki, pointing accusingly at him. "Shows what the guy who's always calling me an idiot knows—I thought you might say something like that, so I went out to confirm it with my own eyes!"

Putting the manuscript down, Saruhiko sat up on the floor and drew his knees to his chest. He couldn't help but smile.

"So Misaki is learning, is he?"

"How many times do I have to tell you not to—"

"How close did you get?"

Misaki glared for about a second before a wide grin split his face.

"I saw him right from the other side of the street, Saruhiko, it was awesome! You wouldn't believe how cool it was to see him just doing nothing more than walking—he has two Nephilim and a bunch of other followers, but you'd know it was him as soon as you saw him because he just has this... this... I can't believe it was something I saw with my own two eyes; an angel, a real angel here in our city!"

Something bugged Saruhiko about the glee in Misaki's voice. It was different to how he'd seen him before somehow; when Saruhiko had shown him a new spell, or a YouTube video of a more experienced, skilful warlock, performing something far above their level; or even the specs for a new board they'd never be able to afford.

(Niki's things had been sold likely for less than they were worth. He hadn't cared. He'd just wanted to be rid of them).

Something was different in Misaki's eyes just then, and Saruhiko hated it instinctively—wanted to tear it down and drive it out from the root.

"How big were his wings?" Saruhiko asked.

Blinking, Misaki's expression went a little confused; a little crack running up that repulsive elation he'd been showing.

"Wings? I didn't see them. I mean, he was only walking down the street, he didn't have any reason to display them or anything. It wasn't like there was a battle."

"Oh?" Saruhiko asked silkily, his own grin tugging at the corner of his lips. "Then Misaki didn't see an angel, did he? Misaki only saw some random schmuck walking down the road and believed whatever he heard about him from the nearest useless gossip."

"Stop it, Saruhiko, and don't fucking use my first name. He was an angel, I could tell it in my heart!"

The smile on Misaki's face was so, _sickeningly_ confident. And Saruhiko didn't yet want to admit why he hated it so much.

"Misaki has the Sight now, does he? Tch, won't that come in handy."

"Oh, fuck off, Saruhiko—if you're going to be like that. But you should come and see for yourself; he's taking in all sorts of followers to develop their abilities, and you and me are way more advanced than anyone else around here!"

Saruhiko clicked his tongue. "Taking in followers for what? Another gang in an area of the city that hardly needs one more straw on its camel's back. Any angel worth a damn would have just levelled the whole place like Kagutsu did."

He could almost hear the muscles move in Misaki's fingers when his fists clenched.

"The fuck, Saruhiko? What is with you today? And how did you know about HOMRA anyway, had you already heard about this?"

"One can hardly perform even a cursory hack of JUNGLE's network without running into mention of Suoh Mikoto these days," Saruhiko said ruefully.

It seemed almost ridiculous to have such aspirations as those that had filled Saruhiko's head in regard to JUNGLE. The network was protected, magically and technologically, by some of the most sophisticated charms and firewalls that Saruhiko had ever heard of, and in combination with one another they were practically a mobius strip of fortification against the network being messed with.

All so whoever was at the centre of it could hand out cheap, false charms to idiots who wanted a quick magic fix to impress their friends when they either didn't have the talent or didn't have the time, or didn't have the connections to train for it properly.

They were no more than agents of that centre, carrying out his whims with his magic and stupidly thinking it was their own. Rumour had it there was real power waiting at the end if you completed enough of these 'challenges', but Saruhiko reckoned it was more likely all roads through the jungle lead to a boiling pot and someone's dinner-plate. Someone who was far, far more powerful than he or Misaki; perhaps even on the Fox's level.

But then, Saruhiko wasn't going ahead with his plans to hack JUNGLE because he wanted the prestige of having defeated whatever this 'centre' was.

No. He could have been swallowed up by the Fox any day now. He was doing it for...

_'Wow, Saruhiko! That's awesome!'_

"Oh yeah," Misaki said, taking his stupid cap off to run his fingers through messy red hair. "How is that thing going anyway?"

Already the idea of the hack had become 'that thing' in the wake of the awesomeness of the angel—Misaki could be so demanding sometimes, and probably without realising he demanded a thing. But Saruhiko wasn't willing to give up what he'd damned himself to keep just yet. Not until it was wrenched out from his burned hands.

"As if you'd even understand the theory behind the electronic side of things," he muttered. "But it should be ready soon. And if it works it'll be something even a high-ranked angel like Suoh couldn't have dreamed up."

That made the light in Misaki's eyes shine on him again. That was better.

"Wow, Saruhiko—you do that and maybe the angel will come to _us_ instead of the other way around!"

Saruhiko sighed. "You talk like it's inevitable we're going to be involving ourselves with this angel, Misaki, did you ever think it might be better if we just stayed well away? Last time an angel started up shop in the human world didn't exactly end up going well for the humans."

"Oh come on, monkey; I'm telling you this guy's different! You didn't see him..."

At that moment Misaki's voice suddenly became smaller, more vulnerable almost, like this was far, far more to him than the usual childish flights of fancy that had him asking Saruhiko if they could go see this warlock, or that warlock; ask him if he could teach them his personal party-trick that had happened to impress Misaki that week. This was the kind of voice Misaki used when he was talking about something that really, truly mattered to him—affected him to depths he usually didn't show to the world.

How could that be though, when all that had happened was that he'd seen some guy walking down the street? For all Saruhiko knew, it hadn't even been Suoh Mikoto.

(It was. Misaki might have said it was destiny—that Saruhiko's prophetic dreams proved it. Only, Saruhiko hadn't told Misaki about those, and he never would).

"... it was like, there was this force within him, this... fire."

Oh, yes. Saruhiko knew about that fire. Misaki must not have seen his eyes darken, his fingernails scrape on the woven-straw rug as they closed into a fist; he gave Saruhiko a small laugh.

"I can't explain it."

"I don't care," Saruhiko told him. "I don't want us to get involved with an angel."

"Why not? Do you really think he'd Fall like Kagutsu did and blow up half the city?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Not this guy, monkey—and even if he did, wouldn't you want to be close enough to know about it beforehand and maybe stop it? Or were you thinking of running away from the city like a coward!?"

He had him there. How irritating.

Then Misaki's hands slapped onto his hips. "Wait a minute; you're just doing that thing you do when you disagree with everything I say for no reason, aren't you? Fuck's sake, Saruhiko—I'm trying to tell you there's something amazing that we could be a part of here!"

That thing he did. That thing he did where he just pointed out why Misaki was Wrong About Everything and it went in one ear and out the other. He supposed it was more (or less, depending on how you judged these things) than that; that sometimes there was that look on Misaki's face that he needed to see so desperately he'd be contrary for contrariness' sake.

Sometimes he thought it was because that was the look Misaki would give him the day he found out about the Deal. That was how he imagined it, anyway; all anger, and no sympathy, because only a fucking pathetic piece of shit would ever trade their own soul away.

He wanted that look.

"I suppose if Misaki is that set on meeting the angel, we'll just have to see what he thinks of the plan. Like I said, JUNGLE is interested in the angel too."

Misaki brightened. "You mean, you're going to figure it into the hack!?" A beat later, he rolled his eyes. "You were going to do that from the start, weren't you? You asshole."

Saruhiko smirked. Misaki had no idea just how much of an asshole he was. He supposed it had all been planned from the start though; only, he was pretty sure he wasn't the one who'd done so.

And he was proven more right than he'd thought when, for the first time in months, the Fox visited him that night.

It was a clear night with no moon; Saruhiko had been preparing a few aides for later spells when it happened, and the bruise on his neck that stung with every sharp movement of his head started burning so suddenly as they approached midnight, that it felt like the creature was biting into him all over again.

The visions he'd been having promised him at least a little more time. But the fear he swallowed down was still much greater than he could understand himself being afflicted by.

Because what did he honestly have to fear anymore, apart from that final agony awaiting him in the fire's embrace? From what he'd heard about the angel Suoh Mikoto, it would at least be a quick death, if not a painless one.

"Slave of Our Will," the Fox whispered to him; appearing in the mirror Saruhiko kept for practicing some information-gathering spells. That was part of what it was there for, of course; communication, but it was still incredibly invasive to have something just appear in it without being summoned.

Easier for the Fox than to break through the walls between Earth and Hell and talk to him in person as they had that night, of course.

"... Master," Saruhiko managed to spit the word out without any profanity somehow. He couldn't tell if he was being compelled to his knees, or if his common sense was just pulling him to the floor despite his pride's resistance.

"Slave of Our Magnificence; wretched... mewling worm. Cowering in the shadows of giants—have you heard of the travesty yet?"

Saruhiko had a feeling he knew what the Fox meant. But he pretended.

"Travesty, Master?"

"The stain. The speck of dirt that dares defy the Majesty of Our Becoming. We know you know what we're talking about, slave; don't play ignorant. Otherwise, We'll have to hurt you."

The mark on his neck stung like it was in a vice. Saruhiko shut his eyes and curled further towards the floor.

"The angel... Master?" he hissed, through the pain.

"Obstinate filth," growled the Fox—speaking of the angel, not of Saruhiko this time. "Stealing Our rightful worshippers, trespassing on Our world, flaunting his pitiful little lightshow in the wake of Our Radiance—" his voice grew louder, and other voices joined it from beyond. "We are the All-Powerful, the Beginning and the End, the Creation and the Destruction of all that is created; We will not suffer the audacity of one of those self-righteous, meddling, winged freaks to defy Our Reign!"

By the end of it he was shrieking loud enough that Saruhiko's ears hurt. But even through that pain, Saruhiko had a terrible feeling he knew what was about to happen; what the Fox was about to ask him to do.

There was no point fighting it. However, he remained silent so as not to bring it about any quicker.

All the same, the Fox eventually said—

"You will insert yourself into his midst as one of his blasphemous followers, slave. We must know how he plans to undermine Our Excellence."

In Saruhiko's honest opinion, the angel probably had little to no knowledge of this random demon, and in no way had appeared to start some kind of feud with it. In fact, it almost gave him second-hand embarrassment to think what the expression on the angel's face would have looked like when confronted with the lunatic screaming at him about his 'defiance'.

And he had no idea where the angel would fall on the scale of what the Fox could handle. He was a very powerful demon, true, but from what Saruhiko had managed to gather, this angel was out of his league. Not that the crazy fuck would believe him even if he did feel the need to tell him; the angel would probably kill them both and that would be the end of it.

Still, there was one thing he thought necessary to bring up, if only so he could enjoy a little more time watching Misaki's eyes see him like no one else ever had.

"Wouldn't an angel know my soul was your possession as soon as I went near him, though?"

The pain he received in reply was so intense his whole body convulsed and he ended up lying on the floor.

"Foolish, impudent little slave," sneered the Fox. "You will refer to Us as 'Master' with every breath you speak!"

Oh, _that_ was what had upset the bastard. Well, far be it from Saruhiko to deny anything to his 'Master'.

"Yes... Master..." he gasped, as his body still struggled to breathe with the after-effects of that sudden agony. It lingered in his spine like a poison, feeling like it was stuck in all the places inside him the Fox had eaten away, even though consuming souls didn't work like that.

Against the wall the mirror rattled a little, indicating the strain the Fox was putting on it by extending more than messages through its rift. This was a strong, good quality mirror that had belonged to Saruhiko's mother's family for some time; most magic-practitioners would have thought themselves lucky to possess one, and Saruhiko doubted he'd be able to get anything as good if the Fox broke it, the fucking asshole.

Not that the family had noticed he'd taken it out of the house. Not that they'd noticed him take himself out of the house.

But the Fox seemed to be aware of this danger, and released the mark on Saruhiko's neck from that vice-like sensation.

"Better, slave," he said. "As for the vomitous blot upon Our Glorious Kingdom, there is no need for you to fear. Only obey Us, and supplicate yourself to Our Will, and tremble in awe of Our Might!"

The mirror shook again; the glass within its frame as well as the frame on the wall. Saruhiko flinched.

He was pretty sure the angel would kill him the moment he laid eyes on him; assuming he had half a brain.

 

*~*~*

 

_Sometimes, he catches Suoh Mikoto staring at him, like he's trying to figure out what, exactly, Saruhiko is lying about._

_Saruhiko thinks non-stop about the flames his destiny draws closer to; the nightmares that come more and more frequently and end, when the fire has destroyed him utterly, with a swirling, blue darkness and a figure in the shadow with spread wings steps towards him._

_And yet, one day when Misaki is somewhere else as he is so often since they joined HOMRA, and not at Suoh's side which by contrast is so seldom, the heat from those fatal eyes irritates him enough to snap—_

_"You have a problem, angel?"_

_Too late he remembers the term 'angel' is more of an endearment than an insult, however he made it sound. Suoh just smirks at him._

_"Not a one," he drawls out, then turns and drags his feet behind him as he lights his cigarette._

_Saruhiko can breathe again once he's gone, if barely. It'll all come to a head soon enough._

_It's less than a month after that, as the first snow falls, that Totsuka Tatara's blood is staining his knife, and Suoh isn't smiling then._

 

*~*~*


	2. The Angel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this and Chapter One were all a single chapter, but my browser doesn't like it when I make my chapters too long, so I decided to chop it in half. Thus ends the extremely boring tale of this chapter.

*~*~*

 

Summer burned itself away and Autumn came to take its place, but the fire continued to haunt Saruhiko in his dreams.

Meanwhile in the waking world, he found himself considerably less burned alive than he had been expecting. Either Suoh Mikoto was an unlikely strategic genius letting Saruhiko live in order to play the long game against whatever demon had sent a Damned Soul into his gang of Superfriends, or he indeed lacked even half a brain to recognise what was right in front of him.

Because even if the Fox had managed to conceal the state of Saruhiko's soul somehow, he'd have expected such a hotshot angel as Suoh Mikoto to see through it.

"Wow, Mikoto-san—you're amazing!"

_He can't even tell that a King-level demon has its claws in my soul, Misaki. What are you blabbering about?_

He didn't say it out loud. He didn't want to have a discussion about it, or any discussion about anything, because the more he talked the more likely it was someone would discover his purpose.

So far any suspicion he'd felt directed his way had been from Misaki, confused as to why Saruhiko wasn't having the time of his life as part of the heavenly host. If he hadn't resolved to shut the fuck up about it, Saruhiko might have snapped that he'd hoped to gain something by themselves without resorting to blatant shortcuts like agreeing to become an instrument of a fucking angel. And hadn't he always said that anyway?

But then, he'd fucked up that planned hack on the JUNGLE network quite spectacularly, and he guessed it wasn't all that surprising Misaki had turned away from him in disappointment.

Though he still longed for glimpses of those incendiary eyes; eyes that were taken from him a little more each day. Sometimes he imagined ripping out his own eyes, so he could at least pretend that Misaki's were always on him, beyond the veil of darkness.

Here and now before him, they were always only on Suoh.

Smoke rose up into the night sky, flying away from the smouldering remains of one of the Golden Covens; one of those offshoots that inevitably went off the rails after a while—as this one had done when they'd captured a Nephilim and began experimentation to see if she could increase their power somehow. The Grand Gold Magus was going to catch a lot of flack from the Host for this, offshoot or not.

This latest development, also, threatened Saruhiko. Right now the girl (like Misaki) seemed to have eyes only for Suoh, but who knew what she'd see when she looked into him?

What she might tell the others. It made him hope they'd shove her off onto the Host to find suitable guardians for as soon as possible.

Which, of course, they didn't.

 _"Female Nephilim are rare,"_ the Fox had told him, during the most recent of his reports in to impart what he'd learned about HOMRA, and in one of his more lucid moods. _"I can see why the Golden Mages are eager to learn what they can about her."_

Why she should have been any different to the males, like Kusanagi and Totsuka, Saruhiko didn't know.

"It's all right, Anna," Totsuka was saying, even now. "You won't have to shoulder your burden on your own anymore. HOMRA will be your family now."

Saruhiko glanced sharply at him and couldn't help but mutter loud enough for the rest to hear him; "Are we really sure a gang of punks running a bar are going to be thought of as good candidates for adoption?"

Suoh snorted, folding his wings back as close to his back as they went before they'd have been pulled inside his body, and Misaki glared with clenched fists.

"Who cares about that?" he yelled. "Of course HOMRA is going to be looking after Anna! We're the _heroes_!"

Rolling his eyes, Saruhiko turned to Kusanagi, since if there was ever a voice of reason in their oh-so-heroic group, chances were it'd be his.

But Kusanagi only smiled and put a hand on Anna's lace-capped head.

"I think what Fushimi-kun means is that taking responsibility for a child, particularly a Nephilim, isn't something to be done lightly." And before Saruhiko could turn and say that no, that wasn't at all what he'd meant, he added, "But Fushimi-kun... none of us are accepting this responsibility lightly, even if we sometimes don't look that way."

In reply, Saruhiko only clicked his tongue; because what was the point in talking to those idiots anyway, it wasn't like they were going to make _him_ look after the kid. God knows even HOMRA had more sense than that.

It was then that Anna's eyes turned on him for the first time; curiously, like she'd seen something interesting about him. Fuck, he should have just kept his mouth shut. If she said something...

But she didn't.

The worst thing was that he actually felt disappointed by that.

"Yeah, Saruhiko—stop worrying! Mikoto-san knows what he's doing!"

Mikoto-san knows, does he? Saruhiko wasn't sure Suoh knew much of anything except how to light a cigarette, and how to burn something up by concentrating too hard. Maybe that was what happened whenever he tried to use that half-a-brain, and so for everyone's safety he'd stopped making the attempt.

He sure as Hell didn't know Saruhiko went straight to the mirror in his house after knocking off early from their 'We Rescued Anna And Caused Untold Millions Worth Of Property Damage' celebrations, knelt before it and said his piece to the Fox.

"Glorious Master." He wished he'd never been born every time that word left his throat. "The angel has officially taken the Nephilim girl under his protection."

A shadow from within the mirror's depths fell across his back.

"The time is drawing closer, slave," the Fox's echo-distorted voice came through the glass. The mark at Saruhiko's collar stung. "The blemish and all who follow him will perish before Our Presence like little ants in the flood!"

And all who follow him? The Fox had never mentioned that before, though Saruhiko knew he shouldn't have been surprised. He had more sense than to beg for Misaki to be spared, at any rate, the Fox would most likely tell him the only way to do that would be to get Misaki to give the demon his soul too.

Saruhiko fantasised about that, sometimes. Him and Misaki, eternally beholden to the psychopathic whims of the Hoarder of Souls, forced to complete whatever tasks he had for them against their wills and yet...

...together.

Misaki would forgive him, eventually, he told himself. He'd have no one else, down in Hell, in their own small little world. And the Fox had so many forms, so many possessions that it was unlikely he'd call on either of them in particular too often, not once Saruhiko's one purpose in spying on Suoh Mikoto was over with. He hadn't been bothered for almost a full year before that.

But it would have completely defeated the purpose of selling his soul for Niki's death in the first place. And he just couldn't... just couldn't put Misaki in chains like that. In endless torment.

It was just a fantasy. Wasn't like the Fox would win against Suoh Mikoto anyway.

"What do you want me to do, Master?" he asked. He needed to stop thinking about this. Just let it happen.

Just let it happen.

Where had he heard that one before? Apart from Niki, all those times an ever-stronger paralysis spell had rendered him unmoving on the floor, looking up at the man as he'd touched the tip of his calligraphy brush to his tongue and looked over the symbols he'd set down on the walls, on the floor, sometimes even on Saruhiko's body, though he'd never had to do more than open his shirt.

_"Hah! With the way you're looking at me you'd think I was some kind of freak! Don't worry, son of mine; even if I did like little boys I'd only ever be using you to catch the less ugly-looking ones."_

He hated himself that he'd actually been hurt to be called 'ugly', in a situation like that. Pathetic. He was pathetic. So what did it matter what the Fox wanted from him?

"Stay close, little slave; stay close. When the time comes, We will bestow upon you the greatest of Honours—We will make you the Instrument through which the blow itself is struck!"

In his chest, Saruhiko's heart jarred almost too harshly for him to have the wherewithal to say:

"Thank you, Master," fast enough that the Fox wouldn't send him careening to the floor in agony.

Of course, the creature did it anyway. Saruhiko really needed to work on making his tone more convincing one of these days.

Oh wait, no—he'd be dead soon.

Dead from angel's fire when the Fox decided to use him as a grounding point to have a duel with Suoh in the Human World. Not all demons needed to possess a Human World object in order to have form within it; the Fox certainly didn't, but keeping form within the Human World required a great deal of concentration for most of them, something the Fox was not so good at. A human vessel would ensure he didn't get knocked back into Hell by accident every time Suoh landed a hit.

Saruhiko would probably have fatal internal bleeding after a single strike. Maybe he'd only actually die from shock when the flames engulfed him though. Strike the final blow indeed...

He twirled a knife around his fingers on one of Kusanagi's bar stools the next evening and watched the light glint off it, imagining himself delivering the 'final blow' to Suoh Mikoto. Somehow it wasn't as satisfying in his head as he might have thought it would be. Probably because he knew how hollow the idea was, in its absurdity.

Kusanagi was out accompanying Suoh to smooth things over with the Golden Mages. The Grand Magus may have been but a mortal human, after all, and on the verge of his centenary, but he wasn't someone even an angel wanted to mess around with.

Not that Saruhiko thought there'd actually be any problems with them; Kokujoji Daikaku was allegedly not senile in his old age, and definitely not enough to have supported that particular daughter-coven, either in their experiments on the young Nephilim or in their goal for those experiments.

HOMRA had discovered only the day before that what the idiots had been trying to do had been to summon some super-powerful anti-chaos demon without endangering their own souls; the mention of whose name had actually put an expression bordering on urgency on Suoh's face, so Saruhiko figured the guy was bad news.

Mr. Awesome had even followed Kusanagi's suggestion to go to the mages _willingly_.

The bar was virtually empty, as a result. Or so he'd thought until the door to the upstairs opened and the Nephilim girl emerged.

What was he even doing there, again?

She looked up at him from the other end of the bar; wide, red eyes searching deep within him. _She_ saw him, to some degree at least, and as stupid as it was to get worked up over the stare of a goddamn kid he felt his heart begin to beat faster and the fabric of his collar become rougher against the mark on his neck.

"What do you want?" he asked her.

Her eyes narrowed—confused. Perhaps she was too young to know a Damned Soul when she saw one. As she was the only one who seemed to be able to See, he could only hope she didn't describe what she saw to her fellow Nephilim.

"You're... Fushimi Saruhiko-san," she said. It wasn't really a question.

"Yeah. So?"

"You have... on your neck..."

Slowly, the red marble she had between her thumb and forefinger was being raised up to her eye, and Saruhiko reacted on instinct, pushing himself away from the bar and summoning a chain-dagger—a simple knife that he could replicate at will—to point towards her. Her fist closed around the marble and she drew back in shock.

"Shut up!" he hissed at her. "Shut up, and don't look at me; don't ever look at me!"

Honestly, he couldn't deny he felt pathetic when he saw her little shoulders shake; hands drawn to her chest she nodded in agreement and kept staring at him, too frightened to move.

Too frightened to move at the drawing of a single, easily banished blade? Even after all that time suffering much worse from the Gold Mages? What the hell was _her_ problem?

There were footsteps on the stairs in the room she'd come in from, and Saruhiko dismissed the dagger with a flick of his wrist a good three seconds before Totsuka appeared.

"Whoops," the other Nephilim said, stumbling into the room. "Almost fell down the stairs there. It's been a crazy week, hasn't it?"

He blinked at the lack of reaction he was getting. Saruhiko was only just acknowledging him out of the corner of his eye; stare still directed at Anna, while hers darted back and forth from him to Totsuka, but were on him for the majority.

Totsuka laughed weakly. Saruhiko wasn't too worried about him figuring anything out, his talents hardly lay in his observational skills; at least not when it came to what was important here.

No, his 'talents' were concentrated in one single, specific area, and he was just about useless at everything else.

"Uh oh," he said, hand at the back of his head. "Is this, uh... what would you call it? A misunderstanding? Don't let that expression fool you, Anna-chan; Fushimi-kun isn't at all scary when you get to know him."

_Idiot. I'm selling you all out to a demon; for fuck's sake!_

"And Fushimi-kun, I guess this must be kind of awkward for you since you're only just getting used to the rest of us, and Yata tells me you're not used to having a proper family."

Breath catching in his throat, Saruhiko forgot Anna and spun wide-eyed to look at Totsuka and hope the rage boiled over his eyes and struck the Nephilim down, because how _dare_ he say something like that!

"It'll all turn out okay!" Totsuka assured him. "You and Anna will get used to each other soon."

He really couldn't be around to hear this. It was too much to not make him want to stab something.

But he wasn't some loser who couldn't control himself. No, he'd always been perfectly controlled, hadn't he? Even when he'd dripped poison from his lips time after time to try and sting Misaki it was always because it was his intention. Even when he'd been kneeling on the floor of that ruined church, chanting in the moonlight, even if his fingers had trembled around the photograph as he'd pulled it out—

No, he'd just turn and leave and the two Nephilim could say whatever they damn well pleased about him out of earshot. He went to do just that.

"Ah; Fushimi-kun, my apologies, you don't have to leave!"

Before Saruhiko could say anything, the idiot half-breed had run around the edge of the bar and caught Saruhiko's hand between his own; so gently, even with the urgency of the act. Saruhiko felt his nail nick the skin of the Nephilim's palm as he yanked it back.

"Don't touch me," he hissed. "Don't ever..."

And suddenly, all the lights became oh-so much brighter, and the world revolved like the inside of a wave.

There was fire everywhere. The light, unnatural crimson the angel brought forth when he unleashed his power, just like every other time Saruhiko had had this dream—only, hadn't he just been awake?

The flames couldn't truly hurt him in his dreams. Yet, he thought he felt pain all the same; especially in his neck where the mark marred his pale skin, and his hand...

His hand. Gripped around a dagger with a fox's head hilt, it looked almost like he'd dipped it in a pool of blood, and felt like the blood had been close to freezing, so cold he thought it hurt again, though it was still only a dream.

Well, not only, perhaps.

When the wave of red flames washed over him and dispersed the blood remained, dripping into a small puddle that lay at the end of a trail of the stuff; and at the other end was...

Totsuka.

The shirt he was wearing, as he lay on the floor before him, was light enough for Saruhiko to see where the blade in his hand had gone into the Nephilim; over and over again until the blood had stopped flowing. Those warm eyes, and the little hooks within them that he fished for people's thoughts with; those were glassy enough to look like they too had been frozen.

Ah. Saruhiko understood now, what the Fox was planning.

Then he heard the footsteps. Sharp and even. He looked up from the body and saw the shadow, the darkness in the shape of a man whose wings unfolded before him to such outstanding length, like they could stretch to either end of the horizon, backlit by a moon as magnificent as the sun—

\--a sword—

_Wake up, Saruhiko. Come on, now. Wake up._

_It's okay. Wake up, Saruhiko, you're safe here._

No he wasn't.

 

*~*~*

_He stands outside the doorway as soon as he hears his name mentioned, as anyone would, and doesn't need to look through the crack to know what the angel-club look like when they gossip about him._

_"I'm sure he just hadn't had enough to eat. You've seen the poor kid; he's rail thin."_

_"I think it was more than that though, Izumo-kun. Something in the way Anna was looking at him... Anna?"_

_"He had a mark... on his neck..."_

_Fingernails dig into his palms. If he leaves his hiding place to interrupt them, they might only take the opportunity to ask questions he can't answer._

_"A mark? What kind of mark, Anna-chan?"_

_Silence._

_"Anna? What kind of mark?"_

_"I can't say."_

_A moment later the girl runs out into the hallway, almost straight into Saruhiko. She freezes for a moment; gasps, then takes one step back and runs up the stairs. Saruhiko breathes a sigh of relief, and the next, much longer silence is broken by the angel._

_"No need to look so worried," he murmurs. "She probably just saw the kid getting a hickey."_

_"Mikoto!"_

_Saruhiko almost laughs. And hates himself for it._

 

*~*~*

 

When it happens, it happens all too soon; on a starlit night with the Ship of the Eternal Guardian Angel, Emperor of the Sky, who as far as Saruhiko knows has never guarded a damn thing in the history of human kind, floating past the moon above him.

He stood on the roof of the building, looking out at the city. So many, worthless, pointless people. Each one as boring as the next. No wonder Misaki didn't pay any attention to him anymore; fuck, if he hadn't known his soul was already well on its way to being swallowed up he might have been planning something equally drastic in its stead.

Just... anything, to keep those burning eyes on him. Anything. He could have told the angel weeks ago that the Fox was planning to use him to kill Totsuka and got the whole thing over and done with then; protected all of Misaki's new, worthless friends but every moment he could squeeze out of this wretched existence with those eyes blazing away to try and burn out the poison Saruhiko would speak to him, every fleeting glimpse...

He couldn't bear to just let that all go.

By now he was over ninety-eight percent sure anyway, the Fox would lose to Suoh Mikoto in open combat. The odds would drop significantly if Totsuka died though, and Saruhiko hadn't had the will to think of a way out of that that didn't involve going up to Suoh and saying 'Please kill me', or the nearest equivalent.

Demons were grounded to the Human World with hosts, vessels; objects they could use to keep themselves tied to a plane other than their natural habitat—even the most powerful benefitted from them. Angels were different, and yet angels were the same.

Even the most powerful ones benefitted from something to ground them, and that usually came in the form of a Nephilim follower. Suoh had three now, but everyone knew it was Totsuka more than the other two who served that particular purpose.

His one purpose. It wasn't like Saruhiko would miss the idiot if he did end up making a pincushion out of him. He wasn't friends with any of these people, and none of them would miss him in return.

Sometimes, he thought they might have at least told themselves they cared. But they didn't. How could they?

_"No one likes you though, do they?"_

"Fushimi-kun?"

Outside on the roof the sound was dimmed by the stronger winds that had Saruhiko wrapping his arms around himself until he heard the voice calling to him.

Totsuka was looking up from his piece of ancient junk camera, apparently having not expected Saruhiko to be up there. Having nothing to say, Saruhiko ignored him, and tried to do the same to the wind.

"Fushimi-kun, are you all right? Please don't faint again, Fushimi-kun, you might fall over the railing and then Yata-chan would cry."

Saruhiko didn't find that funny. He was dreaming of Misaki's laughter every night by that point. Totsuka must have at least seen the former was true.

"Sorry," he chuckled. Then to Saruhiko's annoyance he walked up to the railing to stand next to him. "You do know it's true though, don't you? If anything happened to you?"

 _Leave me alone_ , Saruhiko thought. _For fuck's sake get the Hell away from me before you end up bleeding out right here on this roof._

"Do We hear the sweet tones of the Nephilim, slave?"

His heart stopped.

_No._

The voice came from the back of his mind; from the Fox's grip on his soul.

_No, not yet—not now! I haven't had enough time!_

He'd had far more than most people got after they were foolish enough to sell their souls with no specification about timing in their bargain. And yet, in a flash, all that resignation he'd had the past two years was utterly destroyed.

What a fucking joke.

"Fushimi-kun? Fushimi-kun, is something wrong?"

"... out of here."

He could feel the Fox, coming up through the depths of Hell; coming up inside him.

"What?"

"Get out of here," he spat. "Get away now!"

"Fushimi-kun, what's wrong? You have to let someone help you—"

Oh, how he could have laughed; as his spine felt like it was going to snap.

"You can't help me," he forced himself to say, though he bit his tongue fighting against what was happening to him. "No one can help me..."

Was he crying? He couldn't tell. He felt a charm so sleek he'd never noticed it shatter with the force of the possession, and Totsuka's eyes widened.

"There's something... Fushimi-kun—that mark!"

All his self-congratulation for his control turned hollow when, unable to think of any other option when the stupid, _stupid_ Nephilim had grabbed his arm with those gentle hands, warm, concerned eyes beginning to fill with horror, knowing the brainless lapdog would refuse to leave him even as he saw the truth, the creature that owned him forcing its way into its property right in front of its intended target...

He used the last of his control over his own body to summon a dagger, and drive it through the hand on his arm as he pushed the other man away with a scream.

Totsuka didn't scream, not so that it made a sound at least, though having a knife driven through your hand was no less painful for a Nephilim than for a full-blooded human.

"Get the fuck away from me now, you fucking stupid piece of shit!"

Saruhiko shrieked out the last words so harshly his throat burned, and he heard the echo of the Fox's voice in his own. Totsuka finally staggered back, and as his camera clattered to the floor he turned and ran back for the stairs, fear like Saruhiko had never seen or imagined possible from him before stark on his face.

 _Not fear of you though_ , some pointless instinct told him. _For you._

The door clanged against the frame with such force it bounced back open again and stayed there—meaning Totsuka had some strength after all, the moron; why had he had to come up here when Saruhiko was alone? It was obvious the Fox had been waiting to get him out where no one would see them.

This was it. This was it. Everything was going to be over within minutes, and it stung so much worse because he'd spent all this time thinking he'd find it a _relief_.

"Imbecile!" the Fox's awful voice screeched into his skull, bringing unprecedented agony in its wake. "Worthless, impudent slave—We can still bring _that human_ back to life with no small effort; exchange your life for his even, as you dare to renege on your duty to Our Glory!"

That wouldn't have even mattered with Misaki under Suoh's protection. Hah! It had all meant nothing in the end, hadn't it?

"You haven't collected on your end though, _Master_ ," Saruhiko choked out through the pain, grinning. "Saved me up for later, _Master_. I don't have to do your bidding until you activate the deal, _Master_."

"Oh?" the Fox asked, sounding more amused than angry in an instant. "But you will do Our bidding with our Benevolence within you, pulling every muscle like a puppet on our strings. Don't think you've escaped bathing in your friends' blood yet; pretty little thing—We'll have you drink it from their corpses before the sun rises!"

The angel would also be less powerful at night. But he would have Totsuka to ground him, and that meant—

"Saruhiko!"

Oh fuck, no.

Scraping along the roof the wheels of that childish skateboard drew towards him, and it felt like Misaki shook the building with each step when it was all just tremors inside his chest.

From the mark on his neck, his body turned so forcefully that Saruhiko couldn't even make his muscles try to pull the other way. The Fox was neat and fully seated in his soul now; his chance of fighting him off was less than nothing.

His eyes were wrenched open by the same force; grin pulled so tight across his face it hurt, and his forefinger dug into the blade of the knife he'd stabbed Totsuka's hand with. But the sight of Misaki racing towards him worriedly, rolling over where Totsuka's blood had dripped onto the floor, with no idea...

No, no, no, no, no!

"Saruhiko! What happened!? Anna suddenly said your name, and Totsuka-san just came running down injured—"

The Fox laughed inside his head. "How poetic," he said, so only Saruhiko could hear.

And before a single strategy could form inside his head the creature made his arm throw the dagger straight at Misaki's throat...

...

... it burned up before it even touched him.

Suoh Mikoto stepped up onto the stage with Kusanagi right behind him and all the rest who'd been down in the bar filing out of the dark doorway in battle formation—though from the looks of them only the angel and the Nephilim knew what was going on. Even Totsuka reappeared with a towel around his hand, Anna clutching on to the tails of his jacket.

Meanwhile Misaki had frozen almost still, twitching slightly, eyes wide and not comprehending.

"What?" he said.

_Don't show me that face. Please, Misaki, don't show me that face._

The angel passed him with a few steps; calm and steady, as Kusanagi came up behind Misaki to put his hands on his shoulders, his face already full of regret as he prepared to hold him back.

"Saru—Mikoto-san, what's wrong with him—he didn't... Saru couldn't have..."

Suoh Mikoto had the same face he always did.

Except his eyes looked...

Sad.

"Fushimi," he greeted him, with _such_ a sigh... "You stupid, stupid kid."

Saruhiko supposed he couldn't argue. In more than one sense of the word, as his body was under the complete control of a King-level demon.

Indeed, when his mouth opened to reply, it wasn't his idea. The words that came out had the echo of so many Damned Souls in them, high-pitched and false.

"Fushimi Saruhiko is currently unavailable," said the Fox, through him. "He sends his love to all his mortal friends; and the so-called angel, who couldn't even tell he was putting his brand on a Damned Soul!"

The angel's countenance didn't change, but everyone else's did. It twisted Saruhiko inside somehow, even as talking through him made his lips burn and his jaw feel like its bone was trying to tear itself away from his head, to see their dumb disbelief.

"Damned?" Misaki yelled, lurching forward before Kusanagi's hands tightened on his arms. "Who the fuck do you think you are? Saruhiko isn't a Damned Soul!"

The Fox laughed.

"Ah, how delicious—this soul I'm eating every part of," he declared, spreading Saruhiko's arms wide. "Rotten to the core, of course, but anyone who gives it up so cheaply would be. All I had to do to get this one on my plate was kill one measly human. You know what I'm talking about, _Mi-sa-ki_."

_Don't use his first name._

_Don't tell him anything._

_Don't fucking talk to him._

Misaki looked like he'd seen a ghost. Almost as if he really did know as soon as it was said what the Fox was talking about. Had he... could he possibly have thought enough to guess...?

Suoh Mikoto threw a cigarette to the ground.

"All of you get back."

"Mikoto-san—!" cried Misaki.

It was starting to snow.

"Izumo. Get them all back."

"But, Mikoto-san—!"

The angel's wings spread out, wide and powerful and in the shape of an eagle's. There wasn't anything quite like angel wings though; especially Suoh Mikoto's, for all Saruhiko had never seen another's up close. The way they bent the air around them with their heat; pitch-black feathers that shone red where the sunlight caught them, fire cascading between every one so that they looked like wing-shaped pools of magma.

All the flames they made spread out against the night sky like shining streamers, and from the way the Fox jerked his body back—felt almost like he broke a bone or two doing it; the human body was not meant to be a vessel for something so powerful—Saruhiko got the feeling the stupid thing just realised it had overestimated itself.

Funny thing was—Suoh's blazing, radiant wings silhouetted by the stars looked nothing like those of the man of darkness in his dreams.

 

*~*~*

 

 _"What do you people need wings for anyway?" Saruhiko asks Munakata, watching him watch the world outside through the window. "You can all fly without them, and the energy needed to make them look as flashy as you do comes at_ quite _the cost."_

_Munakata smiles, and keeps his eyes on the sky._

_"That's a good question, Fushimi-kun," he says. "One which I don't know the answer to, I must confess."_

_"Doesn't seem very efficient, Captain. Maybe you should just start cutting them all off."_

_Lips pull back and reveal neat white teeth. Saruhiko turns on the bed to face the wall instead, and looks at the shadows of the grinning man's wings, cast on the wall as they unfold._

 

*~*~*

 


	3. The Damned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose I should say I've taken some stuff from 'Supernatural' for this, even if it's mostly just generic angel/demon-verse. I stopped watching Supernatural years ago at any rate.
> 
> This chapter starts off in Izumo's POV, which seems to have become my go-to when I'm not writing Saruhiko, what's up with that? I really wanted to do this scene though, and Saruhiko isn't in it, so... yeah. There'll probably be more like it. Anyway, thank you for all the kudos and comments, and I hope you enjoy this instalment!

*~*~*

 

"Hey, this isn't real, right?"

Izumo turned his eyes away from the palm of the hand he'd been resting his forehead in and saw Yata, whose horrified eyes belied the grin of denial below them when he said those words.

"Mikoto-san? That was only an illusion somehow, right? Saruhiko is going to be okay?"

It was rare Izumo saw Mikoto look on such obvious lies with sympathy, but here his face said it all. Yata subsequently thought hard; grin vanished, trying to come up with some way to change the reality that he was in.

All Izumo could do was sigh. He didn't have the heart right now to try and make sure Yata faced the facts, not while he found it so difficult as yet to face them himself.

That poor kid...

"How could we not have seen it, King?" Totsuka mumbled. As hard as it was to see the looks on Yata and Mikoto's faces, to hear the abject guilt and lack of confidence in Totsuka of all people made Izumo physically cringe. "That demon said... before we'd even met him..."

"While you were fighting I saw a glimpse of its true face," Izumo told them. "And I recognised it, from the network."

"You mean JUNGLE?" asked Fujishima. He and the others were all huddled around the bar facing out towards the booth where Mikoto and Anna sat opposite him and Totsuka as he bandaged the other's hand.

They were Nephilim, so the wound wasn't serious enough to need a professional's attention; and frankly Totsuka seemed to barely notice it, not even having flinched as Izumo had cleaned the edges.

Yata was standing right by the table, shaking slightly.

"No, not that: the Exorcists' network," Izumo replied. "I keep an ear on them for various reasons."

Professional Exorcists were a diverse bunch. Izumo would know; his mother had been one. They had some of the best and most up-to-date information one could get when it came to supernatural phenomena in any given area—more than once it had alerted him to trouble within HOMRA territory.

There were also those that were the trouble in themselves. Keeping tabs on the network was also good for keeping tabs on such characters, and had also come in handy in the past. As he made the admission he glanced towards Eric, whose parents had been killed by Exorcists for forming an 'unholy' union, but the current situation must have been dire enough that Eric showed no change in his expression at their mention.

So he went on, "The demon is known as 'the Fox', among other things: hoarder of souls, king with a thousand forms, the colourless one... " he waved his hand dismissively. "The point is, he's King level, and capable of casting a charm powerful enough to conceal a mark of Damnation from even an angel, and if he'd killed Tatara he may have actually had a chance against Mikoto too."

"But Saruhiko stopped him from doing that!" cried Yata. "He must be fighting him even now—we have to find him and exorcise the asshole before it's too late!"

"Yata, exorcisms don't work if the soul belongs to the demon that's possessing their body," Izumo said softly. He tied a knot in the two ends of the bandage and tucked it beneath the outer layer, then placed Totsuka's hand down on the table with another sigh.

Responsibility was something Izumo could not ignore; and, however unofficial, his position within HOMRA had him as the one who needed to strategise their response to this event. Yata was only going to get more and more upset as this conversation progressed if he kept shooting down whatever hopeless suggestions he'd line up—but what could he do?

Everyone knew that once you'd promised your soul to a demon and the demon had fulfilled their end of the bargain there was no power in the seven realms that could free you from them, and that was your lot for the rest of eternity.

That there was no recourse for the desperate, the coerced, the insane, or... or even _children_ , who may not have been capable of understanding the gravity of their decision was just one of the unhappy facts of life.

So, Izumo could only stall the inevitable.

"When it was speaking to us, it said Fushimi-kun had asked it for the life of one human, and that you knew what it was talking about. Was that true?"

Yata first looked scared to have been asked that, then something guilty and regretful came over him and he lowered his gaze.

"His father," he muttered. Then in protest to his own words: "I—!"

It was difficult for him to continue. Izumo tried to be patient, while making the effort not to assume anything about the answer 'his father'.

Although, in his heart he thought he heard the words, 'of course' in reply.

"I..." Yata went on. "I'd kill anyone who had the nerve to say that Saruhiko would kill his own father!" He looked away again. "But he's the only one close to him who's died. And Saruhiko said he was super-powerful, and I know they had... problems."

Closing his eyes, Izumo knew it was best not to speculate, but was about to keep on this line of conversation anyway until Totsuka suddenly started talking again from next to him.

"You said you saw a mark on his neck, Anna." His voice was so agitated it almost made Izumo want to tell him not to talk—some of the others were beginning to exchange uncomfortable looks specifically in regard to him.

Only, how could he justify asking his friend not to speak, in this way or not? The situation certainly called for it. It was just that it was Totsuka of all people that was making the others, that was making Izumo even, disturbed. And yet how could even Totsuka be expected to remain optimistic when it turned out someone under their protection was doomed to eternity in Hell?

Anna fidgeted and looked towards Mikoto, who would have looked bored to any outsider, though Izumo knew this was a rare moment of his being lost in thought.

The girl stared back at the table before speaking.

"It was two black dots," she said. "Like a bite-mark. But I'd never seen such empty black like that before. And sometimes, like just before he fainted in here, it looked like there were lots of thin black lines spreading from the dots; like spider webs. They were so thin they looked like disappeared every time he moved."

Shit.

"Most marks of Damnation," Izumo explained, the words sounding like a drawl because his mouth didn't want to say them, "are something like that, only much more prominent. To people like us they'll look like a bold, black tattoo spreading out from the seal. In this case it sounds like the seal was in the form of a bite to the neck, but kisses and handshakes are also common."

Anna nodded solemnly, and now guilt entered her eyes too, even if the change was so slight it was difficult to see.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have told you when I first saw it."

Before Izumo could smile, pat her head and tell her it wasn't her fault, Totsuka reminded them—

"But it wouldn't have done any good, would it?"

And again, Izumo couldn't help but find the haunted look on Totsuka's face to be... almost inappropriate; because of how the younger man usually was. _Stop it_ , he wanted to tell him. _You're the one who's supposed to keep the rest of them upbeat._

But how could he? It was what it was, and there was nothing any one of them could do. As Nephilim, he and Totsuka were more well-versed even than the warlocks in this; it was something their parents had told them from the cradle. The _absolute best_ they could hope for would be to somehow have the Fox's next of kin declared to be some demon with a shred of decency, kill the Fox and have the other demon 'inherit' Fushimi.

Ridiculously difficult to pull off, and for a meagre prize at best.

"Totsuka-san..."

"I mean," Totsuka said—almost angrily, even, and directing his question at Mikoto. "There is no way to get a soul back that's been freely given, only pass it to another demon if we kill that Fox thing?"

"Saruhiko--!" Yata began, with a yell, then stopped and lowered his voice. "Saruhiko couldn't have done it freely, though. He's smart, he'd have found a way to get what he wanted without resorting to something like this, and he wouldn't have done it without telling me, either!"

Izumo was of the opinion that there was an awful lot Fushimi didn't tell Yata, but he'd always seen that as his business and his business alone.

However, there could be no mistake that the soul had been freely given. Otherwise why wouldn't Fushimi have asked Mikoto for help? He was an obstinate boy, true, but not to that ludicrous extent.

"Yata..." he breathed out with regret. But he had nothing to say after it.

"What?" Yata shot back, voice quivering. "You're saying Saruhiko sold his soul and there's nothing we can do? That there's no hope for him?"

That was indeed what Izumo was saying, and yet, this was _Yata_. He couldn't bring himself to do so much as nod.

Yata turned his fierce glare on Mikoto, pleading—

"Mikoto-san!"

Mikoto moved his head slowly, until he was looking Yata directly in the eyes; such intensity within them that the boy looked slightly taken aback, and Izumo himself wasn't entirely sure what he was about to say.

The words that came out of his mouth, spoken every bit in the same tone he always used, nonetheless shocked everyone.

"Yata. How far would you be willing to go to get Fushimi's soul away from this asshole?"

"Whatever needs to be done," said Yata, firmly.

Then Mikoto smirked. "Even understanding we'd be getting the soul back for Fushimi; not for us?"

Yata blinked. Izumo was beginning to feel something uncomfortably like hope, and something a lot like suspicion. _Is he talking about trying to force an inheritance?_ he wondered. _Or..._

"Wh—well, of course!" Yata cried. "Of course Saru's soul would belong to himself—I mean, _you_ wouldn't own it, right?"

Smirk softening, Mikoto shook his head.

"Mikoto, what are you getting at?" asked Izumo, that little needle of hope making him quite wary, considering this was Mikoto.

The angel's eyes flickered towards him, but then went straight back to Yata.

"The Host would probably have my wings for telling non-angels what I'm about to say," he admitted, and the thought seemed to make him _really_ smile. "But screw them. There _is_ a way to free Damned Souls from damnation."

_What!?_

"But, King—" said Totsuka, only Mikoto spoke right over him.

"The reason we're not supposed to talk about it is that irrevocable damnation works as a pretty good deterrent. Heaven doesn't want people thinking they can sell their souls to save their kid from dying of cancer and expect to eventually be rescued after a few hundred years in Hell. They want that guy to be thinking, _'we will never see each other again, if I do this'_."

That did sound an awful lot like the Host, in all fairness—at least, it would if such a method actually existed.

"Thing is," Mikoto said, "It's not like you would see him again in this lifetime either way. Or, I guess ever again, depending on how you define a person."

"Mikoto," said Izumo, now becoming annoyed and, of course, entirely ignored as Mikoto continued.

"What I _can_ do, Yata, is to go into Hell, find the Fox and kill him. And before," he glanced at Izumo, "before that guy's soul is inherited... we burn it."

In a way, that wasn't a surprise, being Mikoto's answer to most of life's problems. Yata's eyes widened, the only part of his expression that didn't look crushed being confused.

"Burn... Saruhiko..." he said slowly.

Mikoto nodded. "It's a difficult thing for me to do, and I'll be honest I haven't done it before. And it would hurt—both of us. But the fire would purify the Damnation; blood, bone and ash, and Fushimi's soul would be reincarnated somewhere on Earth."

"You mean," Bandou cut in, from the back, "we're going to kill him?"

The stare Mikoto gave him was spectacularly grave.

"The kid's body is only human," he said. "Even after only that short battle on the roof; he's already dead."

It was a harsh reality, but it was still reality. Nothing like this had ever happened to HOMRA though, it was little wonder the majority of the kids were as taken aback as they were.

Izumo was currently more concerned about the 'method' Mikoto had to have Fushimi's soul reincarnated. If they decided to make the attempt (and really, who among them thought they wouldn't?) then that was that and they'd probably be out the door in an instant. Izumo would have much preferred to do some research, even just give his father a quick call to see what he knew before they embarked on this.

' _It would hurt—both of us_ ' Mikoto had just said. But how much hurt was Mikoto talking about? Was this, perhaps, something a specialist should have been doing? Because even if it wasn't, it sounded like something extremely dangerous. Humans may not have been anywhere near as powerful as angels, especially an angel like Mikoto, but as for durability...

Human souls couldn't be destroyed, as far as Izumo knew. Angels and demons, not so much.

"So," Mikoto said, "What do you want me to do, Yata?"

"Before Yata answers that question," Izumo interrupted, one hand raised. "You'll answer one of mine." He looked Mikoto straight in the eyes. "Is this... process, whatever it is, something that puts _you_ in danger of Falling?"

Dead silence filled the room. Mikoto snorted.

"Just being on Earth is a danger to some angels," he said casually.

"That's a yes then," Izumo announced. "Right. That's all I wanted to know."

He took a deep breath, and turned back to Yata.

"Fushimi-kun is _your_ friend. When Mikoto said we wouldn't get his soul back 'for us' he meant that unlike with that demon, what you have of him, he freely gave to you for no kind of payment. But it wouldn't be yours any longer once he was reincarnated. For that reason, this is your decision."

The boy was on the verge of tears, but there was nothing to be done but this.

"So, Yata. What's it going to be?"

 

*~*~*

 

_"Siren's teeth," the mage says, sighing. It's a wretch Misaki's mother has been forced to take him to a professional for a diagnosis—they really can't afford it; but it's been two days now and still—_

_"Oi, Saru—what's he saying? Come on, write it down for me!"_

_His bravado isn't entirely convincing. Saruhiko can see beneath it the fear that whining for him to write everything said in conversation down might be his life from now on._

_"They're extremely rare," the mage continues, ignoring Misaki while Saruhiko clicks his tongue and scribbles the phrase down for him. "I shouldn't like to think what you boys have been getting into. This is not the result of any spell approved by the National Association."_

_"What, you think we did this to ourselves?" Saruhiko asks sarcastically._

_"Huh? Urgh, I hate this stupid spell! Tell him he'd better get my hearing back, Saruhiko!"_

_The mage ignores Misaki again, and gives Saruhiko a hard stare._

_"You upset someone rather dangerous, didn't you?" he guesses. "Anyone with any sense in their head would have gone to the authorities, but you tried to handle it by yourself, and look what it got you. What made you think a pathetic little nothing like you could handle_ him _?"_

_Towards the end of his tirade the mage's voice shifts into someone else's, and he gestures at the table where Misaki is sitting._

_Only, Misaki isn't sitting there. It's Niki's cold dead body, on the proverbial slab and ready for the fire that is both their destinies._

Because I had to _, Saruhiko thinks._ Because I couldn't stand to lose him.

 

*~*~*

 

The approach of the washed-out dawn bounced light off every crystal bead of dew on the long grass. The liquid soaked into the bottom of Saruhiko's trousers as he stumbled through the churchyard, legs pulled along like a doll's by the will of the Fox.

One was broken. It made every step a new experience in agony.

In the back of his mind, the vicious fear in Misaki's voice, crying out to Suoh to show mercy, caused a similar kind of pain.

_"Please! Mikoto-san, please! I know Saruhiko didn't mean to do it, please just give him the chance to explain!"_

Silly Misaki. At this stage it wasn't about mercy, or intent or explanations: it was about safety, and even Suoh Mikoto had enough of a brain to know how ridiculously unsafe Saruhiko was with a King-level demon sitting in his soul.

Not that all King-level demons were going to rip your throat out on sight or anything. But the ones who collected human souls were generally not the type who fed starving orphans in their spare time.

The first blow had cracked at least three ribs. And the blood Saruhiko tasted in the back of his mouth made him certain that he'd been right to think at least one of those bones had pierced his lung. Had he been acting on his own accordance he'd have slammed back into the railing, bounced off it and crashed back onto the floor, shocked into unconsciousness by the hit.

As it stood the Fox had had him grab onto the railing, fly up into a handstand and twist so hard Saruhiko was also sure his arm was dislocated, then move in for another blow.

Suoh had been hampered by having to protect the clansmen who had followed him up onto the roof. The Fox wouldn't attack him directly, but it would go after them, and force Suoh on the defensive. That is, until the exchange of pettier blows that had sapped the Fox's energy, cut heat-venting lacerations into Suoh's wings and left serious burns on Saruhiko's hands, had gone on for long enough that Kusanagi had got most of the idiots off the roof, and left Suoh free to do his most devastating assault.

Only, that normally so keen Nephilim had allowed the biggest idiot of them all to slip past him. And as the fire had pushed against the Fox's shield so hard the cement beneath them had cracked, along with a bone in Saruhiko's leg, he'd heard Misaki cry out—

_"No, Mikoto-san, please!"_

\--and the angel had stopped, unwilling to burn one of his own to death—at least, unwilling when they weren't the one who was Damned.

But Saruhiko was still grateful for it. He hadn't known, or maybe had but wouldn't admit it to himself, that Suoh Mikoto was the type who would allow someone like Misaki to interfere like that, or whether he'd have just burned him up as well.

He guessed he could say that for him, if you thought it was a good thing. It had given the Fox the opportunity to escape after all.

Speaking of whom...

"Abomination!" the Fox shrieked through Saruhiko's blood-filled mouth, as it dragged him through the dirt, towards the old ruins they'd met in two years back. "The impudent, festering pustule! We curse him! We curse him! How dare he deny Us our rightful deference—We curse him to the eternal darkness of the pit!"

_Oh, shut up!_ , Saruhiko wanted to beg it, but at that moment the damage done to his leg became so bad that it buckled over and sent them both tumbling to the ground, where his nose cracked against a footstone and worse; the dislocated arm jarred against some curbing.

When the agony had subsided enough for him to think again, one of the first of those thoughts was that he was going to have to get used to this pain, now that it was time for him to pay the proverbial piper.

Then, without warning, the furious demon ejected itself from Saruhiko's body, through the holes in his neck that felt like they now bore right down to the bone. It quickly took physical form next to him, grabbing a handful of Saruhiko's hair and dragging him up by it. Saruhiko cried out, but even that pain wasn't enough to make him jar his arm again by reaching up with both to hold its arm, and the other hand was likewise too badly burned.

"This was your fault; worthless slave!" it screamed on. "If We had been able to kill the useless Nephilim before the stain noticed, we would have easily won!"

Saruhiko hoped the Fox thought the snort he gave at that statement was just a gasp of pain.

"Now you leave Us with the vexing choice of whether to leave you in the cold and watch you die, slowly, of your wounds... or just rip you limb from limb right here and now."

Its grip tightened on Saruhiko's hair and it pulled him closer.

"After all; there will be plenty of time in Hell to give you the pain you so very much deserve for trying to undermine Us."

Its eyes were of uneven size with its face so contorted by its rage, but it was still grinning.

"And when you've long stopped begging for the pain to end, and started begging for more because you know what you deserve, We will find a suitable vessel on Earth to put you in, and we will go back to your beloved angel and his filthy horde, and We will have you _eat_ that ugly little red one's face off!"

Barely breathing, conscious of every individual strand of hair that was ripping from his scalp, unable to support his weight, Saruhiko still managed a single laugh.

"Yeah, and then you'll conquer candy mountain and become king of the pixies," he choked out, sarcastically. "You couldn't stand up to that angel if you'd killed every last one of—"

"Silence!"

The fox threw him towards the ruins; he log-rolled half a dozen times from the force of it until he came to a halt in front of where the entrance had once been. Apparently his body had decided at that point that it had given up on the whole 'feeling pain' thing, and Saruhiko began to feel numb instead, which he imagined wasn't a good sign.

Funnily enough, it was only right then that he lost his glasses. The moon's light shining off the mist combined with the fault in his eyesight almost made it look like there was a ghostly roof hanging over the crumbling church walls.

That was strange...

"Lie down in the dirt where you belong, slave!" the Fox demanded, now stalking towards him again. Saruhiko thought momentarily about moving to avoid him, but his body made it quite clear there and then that there was a price to be had for its deciding not to feel pain, and he couldn't move anything more than his head. "And enjoy it while you can; there will be few enough precious moments that we let you off the rack in Hell!"

In that case, Saruhiko thought it more prudent to enjoy just looking at the world around him, trying not to lament that he'd already seen the last he'd ever see of Misaki. Well, at least until he became so unrecognisable that it wouldn't matter. But the moon was out in full tonight, and looking especially condescending.

_"That's where the Eternal Guardian Angel's palace is, Saruhiko. Where he takes all the good boys and girls and lets them ride around on clouds and play in the moon-fountains. But maybe I shouldn't tell you about it, since you'll never get to go..."_

Fucking Niki, haunting him with his lies even now. _It's just a cold, dead rock._

Soon enough the Fox blocked his view of the moon by leaning over his, grabbing Saruhiko's lapels and lifting him up.

"But We've just decided—We will extract the apology our Benevolence deserves from you before we allow you into Our Domain. Apologise!"

It tossed Saruhiko forward again, right through the few rotted timbers that was all that remained of the church door. He bounced off the entrance step and skidded a third of the way down the aisle, unable to believe that he was even still alive.

But as long as he was, he decided, he wasn't going to dignify the Fox with any more response. Fuck the megalomaniacal lunatic; he sure as Hell didn't deserve anything from Saruhiko.

What wood remained in the face of Saruhiko being thrown through it shattered with a crash when the Fox approached, splinters flying over Saruhiko's head and a few of the remaining pews. They clattered to the tiled floor like rain.

It was as one of these wooden missiles barely missed his uncovered eye that Saruhiko looked up, and saw something that made him smile.

There was a Devil's Trap floating above the ruins; beautifully drawn lines crackling with blue energy.

A very, very powerful one.

And with a few brazen steps, babbling something about its majesty and the very scary torment Saruhiko was about to face, the Fox walked right into it.

_What an idiot._

"Those weak matchstick-flames of that deformed issue of a pig and a baboon will seem like a gentle kiss when We reveal the true Majesty of—"

The Fox abruptly cut itself off; even a delusional narcissist such as itself would have noticed that it had just walked right into the trap. It almost looked like there was a spectral ceiling over the ruins in order for it to hold the trap and conceal it at the same time; difficult magic indeed. The Gold Mages doing, maybe?

No, they were never this subtle. If only Saruhiko had had the wherewithal to think with his usual analytical abilities, he might have lifted his head in time to see the figure sitting in front of the altar before it spoke.

"You're earlier than I expected, Fox-san. I see Suoh isn't messing around for once."

Hearing that low, smooth voice decided it—Saruhiko was going to have to try and move again. He managed to pull the elbow of his good arm up enough to get it into position to put his weight on it, but from there he was stuck; trying to move onto it made his head swim, and his arm shook like a leaf.

He did just manage to see the Fox though, standing in his usual guise but with less ostentatious dress; a long black trench coat with a stiff collar. It had been silent for the entirety of Saruhiko's attempt to move, and now he saw that it was staring up at the altar with a mix of shock and anger.

All at once, the burning sensation in Saruhiko's neck returned, as the Fox swooped in and took up residence in his body once again. Saruhiko spat out more blood and had no time to wonder why it would do such a thing; it stood his body up on the good leg and raised his head to see what they were facing.

Sitting on the altar, one leg crossed over the other, was a creature in the shape of a man. Saruhiko knew at once it wasn't human, and on a closer glance decided it was almost certainly another demon; in an old-fashioned enough blue coat that he must have just come up from Hell recently, eighteenth-century European with a cravat and frilled shirt over its long, slim frame. It was dark-haired; wearing glasses over deep, dark blue eyes, and in its demeanour there was something about it that reminded Saruhiko uncomfortably of Suoh...

... and at the same time, something very different. In front of him, (and it was strange how Saruhiko thought of it immediately as 'him') a chessboard hovered; both sides a different shade of blue, and the creature was playing against himself even as the Fox tried to shuffle Saruhiko backwards.

Then he sighed.

"I had hoped to finish one more game. Well, I suppose we'll have to move on to a match of a different sort."

He waved his hand, and the chessboard disappeared.

"Who are you?" the Fox hissed through Saruhiko's mouth.

When the creature almost-smiled back at them Saruhiko had the distinct feeling that this was his default expression of sorts.

"Ah, please excuse my lack of propriety—my name is Munakata Reisi."

The Fox lurched Saruhiko backwards so quickly they fell over again; right onto the dislocated arm which Saruhiko couldn't scream at and couldn't even make himself take deep breaths to try to regulate the pain while his body wasn't under his control; he felt like throwing up instead and almost lost consciousness but clung stubbornly onto it because...

Well.

He had to admit, this was getting interesting. Had he been in any state to think, he thought he might have recognised the demon's name.

Clearly the Fox did, and though Saruhiko could feel its fear as strongly as he had when they'd been surrounded by Suoh's flames, it barked out with as much anger as anxiety—

"You!? The abomination!? You slimy, mewling eel—violating the natural order with your existence! Violating Our autonomy with your impudence! You were next on Our list after the angel, but We can destroy you just as easily here and now!"

"Hmm," said 'the abomination', who Saruhiko supposed would now have to fight Suoh for that title. "I think not. Suoh Mikoto has sapped enough of your strength to make this quite simple indeed for me."

The Fox clenched Saruhiko's burned hands into fists.

"Unclean, liquid filth! You think you will kill Us; your rightful Lord and Master!?"

"No," said the other demon. "I was going to originally, but... no."

"Huh?" The Fox replied, its pretence to nobility ruined in one utterance.

And then, before Saruhiko could so much as blink, the blue-clad demon swept forward like a rushing river; fluidly unsheathing his sword and running it straight through Saruhiko's chest.

"I'm going to repossess your contracts, Fox-san," he whispered in Saruhiko's ear.

 

*~*~*

 

_"Oi, Saru! Do you believe in good demons?"_

_Saruhiko remembers staring out into the gloom of the bar, looking at his reflection in the mirrored surface behind the counter. Had Kusanagi put such a thing there just to screw with people with self-image issues so they'd order another drink?, he'd wondered._

_No, it was just to catch out things whose true reflections could be seen in mirrors. But as the image of a Damned Soul, his own sometimes fascinated himself._

_"Saru!"_

_He'd sighed._

_"Your new pal Eric is good enough for you, isn't he?"_

_"Eric's only half-demon," Misaki had pointed out. "I mean the real, full demons like Mikoto-san is a full angel. Because I thought half-demons were all raised by their human parent only, but Eric's parents stayed together until the Exorcists killed them, and when I asked Mikoto-san if that meant there were good demons, he only laughed."_

_Saruhiko had managed a small, bitter laugh as well._

_"I suppose it depends on what you think is 'good', Misaki."_

_Misaki had shoved him. "Don't be like that, Saru—you know what 'good' means; you're one of the heroes! Also, stop using my first name."_

Only you, Misaki _, Saruhiko had thought, and thinks. '_ Good' means only you.

_If it had ever meant something else, he supposes he'd be no more surprised if it was a demon than any other creature._

 

*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full penetration within a minute of meeting; that earns me that 'E' rating, amirite gaiz!?
> 
> (just kidding, that comes later ;)


	4. The Winged Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. It's another chapter. When we last left our heroes, Munakata had finally met Saruhiko, and promptly run a sword through his chest.
> 
> And now, the continuation--in which Munakata does something interesting with his tongue--with more special HOMRA bonus!

*~*~*

 

It felt like a quart more blood at least was pushing up and out of his throat. Then a steady stream began to pour out over his bottom lip.

That was that, then.

Though funnily enough, Saruhiko didn't die right away. A moment of utter incomprehension was followed with the quick understanding that a temporary spell had been written onto the sword that was currently sticking out either side of his body, keeping his physical state frozen within a moment so he could ponder what the demon had just said while he tried to breathe.

Because by 'contracts', did he mean—

"Aaaargh!"

Panicking, pinned in place by the sapphire blade, the Fox lost control of some parts of Saruhiko's body, and he was able to move his eyes to look straight into the other demon's as the thing turned his head from where he'd spoken at Saruhiko's ear and looked right back at him. He was definitely a demon, Saruhiko thought, and yet there was something else about him that was different from any demon Saruhiko had ever encountered.

Almost lesser god-like. But Saruhiko had never heard of a half-demon half-lesser god. In fact, he was pretty sure the only thing one could make a half-breed with was a human, and this 'Munakata' certainly wasn't that. An Ascended? Demons could do that too, but the whole point of Ascension was that you didn't hang around on Earth afterwards.

Fuck, what kind of moron was he? Why was _this_ what he was thinking about when a sword had just been driven through his heart?

As the Fox's attempts to escape were rendered useless by the same spell keeping Saruhiko alive, it took the desperate measure of trying to use Saruhiko's body to thrash it's way free, but Munakata had placed one steady gloved hand on the centre of his back; blade between two fingers, and was holding him completely still. All the Fox could do was kick Saruhiko's legs and use his charred nails to try and scratch the hand holding the sword's hilt, neither of which were very effective in anything but causing Saruhiko more pain.

But it was almost worth it, to feel the Fox in such distress.

_You can dish it out but you can't take it, huh?_ Saruhiko thought. _How pathetic. I should have sold my soul to Mr. Blue in the first place._

Still, the demon coiled in his heart was not about to give up just like that.

"You—you wretched... freak of nature! You spawn of a snake and a frog; how dare you! How dare you! Have pretence to repossess Our contracts? Our property? You trespasser!"

"Yes, yes, it must be quite distressing for you," said Munakata, and with his smile you could tell how sympathetic he was—i.e., not much. "Please try to keep still or you may do further damage to my new human."

The Fox shrieked, but Saruhiko focussed on what the other demon had just said entirely, despite the ridiculous pain it caused him. _His_ new human, huh? So that _was_ what he meant by 'repossess the contracts'; only, never mind all those implications that came along with it, Saruhiko didn't even know how that was possible.

Until a portal opened up beneath his feet, like a dilating pupil. The Fox trembled within Saruhiko as he looked down, straight into Hell.

Everyone had seen it. At school, shortly before he and Misaki had left, one of the last classes they'd bothered attending had been the 'Hell class'; one of those classes everyone had to do and always had strong feelings about, like frog-dissection or Sex-Ed. A rite of passage of sorts; in which the teacher had warned those students of a nervous disposition to leave the room if their guardians had signed the exemption form for them, before putting on the video.

He wondered now if he'd have found it as boring as everything else if he hadn't already been under the Fox's ownership by then. He remembered how the screaming sounded on the tape, before the picture came into focus; like the howling of the wind and oh-so cold. Other students had shivered; even on a video tape the power of the other realm caused such physical reactions, but Saruhiko hadn't moved until the end of the thirty-second clip, when the mist that came out of the darkness began to display rainbow-coloured lights, and the person who'd taken the film had started to walk closer, closer to the edge.

It invited you in, that abyss. And even though you knew, you _knew_ what a horrible thing it would be; part of you wanted to fall in.

Even now, being skewered on Munakata's sword was the only thing keeping him from falling.

" _Hey, don't faint or anything, Monkey_ ," Misaki had said to him that day. " _A man should be stronger than that_." He'd been the only thing that could break him out of that frozen state even though the video had been over for at least a minute by then. He thought perhaps the teacher had asked him a question, then asked if he needed to go to the nurse when he hadn't answered.

_A man should be stronger than that._

How disappointed, he wondered, would Misaki be right now? _That Saru—didn't he turn out to be worthless, huh? Good thing I didn't. Good thing I have Suoh Mikoto._

Those little magpie-thralling lights were starting to reach his eyes right now. If there was anything that spoke for what the place beneath him was, it was that he could feel the Fox go completely incoherent in its terror—and it was looking at the realm it called _home_.

"You may not be aware of this," said Munakata, his voice enough that Saruhiko could almost have torn his eyes away from the pit if the Fox hadn't inclined his head so far towards it; and what a demon he must have been to have had so compelling a voice, "but one of my kind powerful enough can choose to absorb an equivalent bounty from a demon he defeats in exchange for that demon's life."

Saruhiko hadn't known that. Had Munakata been talking to him directly?

It was at that moment as if to illustrate his point that, on a vicious wind, what looked like thousands of paper or paper-like objects came flying out of the open portal along a coiling route, swimming in a line around the three of them in a flutter of now much louder and distinct screams before Munakata took his free hand away from Saruhiko's back, angling the sword up so that he was still supported to he could take hold of his scabbard and hold it up to the stream of papers.

Immediately they dove into it, twisting themselves impossibly small when they neared the rim to fit inside.

_Ah_ , thought Saruhiko. _Then those must be the horde the Fox has hoarded._

"NO!" screamed the Fox, a terrible cry that seemed to last forever, until there was no breath left in Saruhiko's lungs to scream for it.

As if he hadn't heard, Munakata continued to explain, "The defeated demon is sent back down to the lowest circle to start from scratch; though I fear Fox-san will not find his troubles ended there." He paused. "Dear me. Some of these contracts are quite illegal. I'm afraid not only the Court but also the Host will want to speak with you, Fox-san. I know Suoh Mikoto will just jump at that chance."

The Fox forced air into Saruhiko's lungs, as from the glittering depths of Hell the last of the tail of his contracts was in sight.

"NO!" He bellowed. "No! No! No! No! NO!"

He scrambled desperately to try and reach Munakata's face with Saruhiko's arms now they were closer, but the other demon was wearing protection of some kind—he had come well-prepared. Had he known that his would happen here and now? If he had, how?

Who _was_ this creature?

"Now comes the tricky part," said Munakata, with a sigh. "Disentangling you from _my_ property."

Even with a sword run right through the core of him, Saruhiko felt himself shiver.

"He's mine!" shrieked the Fox. "Mine! They're all mine, mine, mine! Give them back! Give them back, you _monster,_ give them back!"

Munakata frowned and snaked his arm around Saruhiko's back below the protrusion of the blade. Their bodies were flush front-to-side now, and while Saruhiko couldn't feel heat from the other he didn't know if it was because Munakata didn't generate it, or because his own body was too numb from shock.

What he did feel, and stupidly so, was that relief he'd thought the end would bring until it was actually staring him in the face. Maybe because it meant the Fox really wouldn't have a chance to try and hurt HOMRA—Misaki, rather—again.

Or maybe his brain was making him feel random emotions in its death throes. If the Fox hadn't still been using his mouth to shriek gibberish at Munakata he might have giggled that he'd considered it was anything else.

Soon his attention was taken up with something very different. As the frown on Munakata's (typically demonically good-looking) face turned from one of distaste for the Fox to one of concentration, Saruhiko felt a push of energy—strangely gentle, coming from the demon. It was also powerful, however; easily a match for some of the higher-level attacks he'd seen from Suoh; and, as much as he could judge from their expressions alone, with a similar amount of effort.

That was when, in an instant, the creature's wings unfurled.

Wings were a complex field; there were whole shelves in libraries of the supernatural dedicated to their forms and significance. But for the purposes of this encounter only two things mattered. Firstly that in their configuration, they looked not like demon's wings but almost more like an angel's; if no angel Saruhiko had seen or heard of.

Secondly, that their outline was exactly that of the wings on the figure he'd been dreaming about for years, and that made something in his heart lurch.

They were long, the span much more so from tip to tip than Suoh's were, though they lacked their width and power, like a frigate-bird's more so than an eagle's. Their fire too; for the feathers that made these wings formed when a skeleton of blue lightning forked out from the creature's back and branched into individual spines. From there the feathers crystallized around their spines like condensation on a window, and smoothed out into a collection of glittery, glass-like leaves around their crackling blue stalks.

Saruhiko couldn't take his eyes off them, even as he felt the Fox begin to disentangle from his soul as so many grasping fibres pulled one by one from a Velcro anchor. It wasn't even painful, exactly, but it felt like parts of him were being pulled apart, and even without pain that was unpleasant.

The wings glowed brighter towards the end, Munakata gave a firmer push, and with a final shriek the last point of fusion between the two of them snapped apart, and the Fox fell into the abyss—cries swallowed up before Saruhiko could even think by the howling mist.

It was gone.

It was really, actually gone.

_What was even going on?!_

Unfortunately, a moment to think through that question would have to wait. Purpose served, the portal to Hell beneath them closed up quickly, at the flick of Munakata's wrist. All of a sudden Saruhiko was on solid ground again, and being lowered gently onto his trembling legs—weight quickly put on the non-broken one. The spectral ceiling and the Devil's Trap shattered too, falling into disappearing dust over their heads.

Before he said anything, Munakata reached into an inside pocket on his coat and retrieved a vial with a bright red bead—no bigger than an apple-seed—rolling softly inside it.

With equal lack of warning, he pulled his other arm back and completely withdrew his sword from Saruhiko's chest in a split-second, spattering blood across the floor. Saruhiko had only the time to realise he was falling before he'd been caught in the demon's arm, the vial was transferred to the sword hand, and Munakata poured the red bead into the wound in his chest.

For a brief moment Saruhiko hadn't the strength to breathe—unsurprising really, what with the gaping hole through his heart, but then, in only another moment, all the pain from that wound was gone.

It took him a while to realise this, though he breathed in and out on instinct; and as he did the pain in his ribs, his arm, his hands, and finally his leg vanished along with it and in his shock at this he went completely limp in the demon's arm.

"A fragment of Philosopher's Stone," said Munakata, casually. "Not enough to make you immortal, of course, but it will keep you alive for a small while yet."

He smiled, and his eyes found Saruhiko's with as much fluidity as his sword had entered his chest, and like that sword they pinned their target in place with stark efficiency.

"Fushimi Saruhiko..."

It sounded like he was testing the feel of the name in his throat. With a snap of his fingers, the old, worn photograph of Niki that Saruhiko had given the Fox was suddenly glinting against his glove—the contract of the Fox's that was now this person's. He gave it a careful appraisal before banishing it back to whatever dimension demons kept these things in, and his smile became a smirk.

"You no doubt heard me tell your former owner this, but I am Munakata Reisi, and I will be your overlord from now on. Let's get along well."

This was far, far too much for Saruhiko to deal with. He looked up into the eyes of the demon holding him, the only thing in the room he seemed to be able to focus on, feeling like he should say something—anything; an expression of defiance, a snark-filled quip, a rueful acknowledgement of the situation, just _something_ to prove to himself as much as anything that he was actually still alive.

Then he noticed a small trickle of dark blood run from Munakata's nose onto his upper lip; some indication as to how difficult that seemingly almost effortless defeat of the Fox had been for him in actuality.

It was only when the demon noticed it too, briefly breaking from his stare to lick the end of the blood away, that Saruhiko was able to form words.

"Your tongue is blue," he observed.

_There's one worthy of Misaki himself,_ he thought.

As if in confirmation, Munakata extended the tip of his—rather royal—blue tongue and revealed that like many demons' it would fork upon extension. He licked his lips again.

"That is true," he said. For a second he looked pensive about it and then brightened. "Would you like to see what I can do with it?"

Ordinarily, one's response to that question in these circumstances might have been along the lines of _'Shit—he's one of_ those _demons_ ', but Saruhiko saw something in the expression on the demon that belied the innuendo in those words; made it seem genuinely unintentional.

He found himself raising his eyebrows in invitation. Even if he was 'one of those' demons, after all... well, at this stage he was thinking 'hey, why not'? it wasn't like it would have been the strangest thing that happened to him that night.

That was all the invitation Munakata needed, apparently; he leant down slowly and inclined his lips to Saruhiko's neck—right where the Fox had bit him two years ago, in fact; that wound that had never healed properly even at those times it had looked like no more than two faded scars in a regular mirror.

He couldn't deny it sent a spark of fear to have another demon go for that spot, given that it was the one place on his body where the pain was still strong.

... or had been, until he felt the soft and lukewarm tongue lave over the wound like water, though it was drier than that of a human. The shudder it sent through him spread from his neck right down his back, which arched—embarrassing as that was, and he reached instinctively to the demon's shoulder to hold onto something.

When the mouth was moved away the pain, and the bite that had plagued him for two years, were gone.

He was beginning to wonder if this wasn't all a ridiculous dream. _'... and then, a ludicrously handsome demon sprung up out of nowhere, defeated the Fox, healed all my wounds and took me back to his castle to be his sex slave—it was the best dream ever!'_

(If you were a brainless horny manchild)

"Does that feel better?" asked Munakata.

Saruhiko nodded dumbly.

"Good. It would be improper for someone under my care to carry the mark of another demon. Now, I think Suoh Mikoto will be on his way here soon, and it will be best if we can explain the situation to him clearly so he can decide what he's going to do." He paused. "Rest assured; I have no intention of allowing you to come to any harm from him. Hopefully he can be sensible enough to see the prudence in this arrangement—even if sense or prudence never were his strong suits."

It was then, as the words prompted Saruhiko to wonder if Munakata was speaking from personal experience—if the angel and this demon knew each other—that he suddenly remembered where he'd heard the name Munakata Reisi from.

The ruins of the Golden daughter-coven still smoking, Anna had volunteered the information even after Totsuka and Kusanagi had assured her vehemently she didn't have to talk about her experiences.

But she'd been worried. The mages had been trying to use her to summon up a very powerful anti-chaos demon, and while she hadn't thought they'd succeeded she didn't know how far along they'd got. If they might not have at the very least left a trail of breadcrumbs for this demon to follow back to Earth.

A demon whose name had wiped that stupid bored expression from Suoh Mikoto's face, and sent him running off to the Grand Gold Magus for conference; though he wouldn't talk about why to his gormless followers, even the Nephilim.

And Misaki had said, " _Anyone who tries to mess with HOMRA will regret it! Still, he must be bad news, this Munakata Reisi_."

 

*~*~*

 

_"Chaos and order," Saruhiko remarks, putting the final edge piece of the puzzle into place. He hadn't sat down to do something as stupid as a jigsaw puzzle, but there was really no point in not putting a few pieces into place while he talked to the demon, and now the mostly-missing image has at least a border. "The mountain that runs from Heaven to Hell, in place of 'good' and 'evil'."_

_Munakata actually looks impressed._

_"Very good," he says. He's searching for all the purple pieces—the colour of the lady in the puzzle's brocade jacket; and he puts another softly in the centre. "Though neither realm embodies such a thing in its entirety, of course."_

_"Of course," says Saruhiko. "You and Suoh are proof enough of that."_

_There's a smile on the demon's face, but it's somehow tight._

_"Heaven is a naturally ordered place, so I understand," he tells Saruhiko, sounding almost wistful for the other world. "But even it realises that absolute order is too stultifying a state for a living system to exist in. Small pockets of chaos vitalise the Host to exercise their inclination to maintain order."_

_"Thank Heaven for Suoh Mikoto, then," Saruhiko replies, sarcastically. "I suppose you'll say next that true chaos can't exist either unless randomised pockets of order can take shape within Hell's borders."_

_Another piece is put into place. The smiling lady's jacket has a silver brooch above her breast._

_"You are quite astonishingly perceptive, Fushimi-kun."_

_Saruhiko decides to push his luck with that. He asks—_

_"Of course, in 'true chaos', don't those little bubbles of order burst at random too?"_

 

*~*~*

 

Izumo didn't know if it was his imagination, or if the screams of Hell were really travelling towards them on the wind as they approached the ruined church.

A quick glance to Mikoto and the brief expression of grim annoyance on his face confirmed it though—someone had already opened up a portal to Hell in this place. Anna flinched and grabbed onto Mikoto's leg with her eyes shut tight.

"What is it?" asked Yata.

Sighing, Izumo turned back towards him.

"The portal's already been opened," he announced. "Looks like it's going to be Plan B after all."

It wasn't like he hadn't been expecting this. But seeing the look of heartbreak on Yata's face was difficult to bear all the same. Even though he'd known having the Fox use Saruhiko to battle Mikoto had given the boy fatal injuries, knowing now that he was truly dead when a few hours ago all he'd 'known' was that things were the same as always, was bringing the reality of the situation home to him.

_As it might be for you, if Mikoto dies_ , a voice inside him said.

That was probably the first time he resented Fushimi, for causing all this. He had been fifteen when he'd made his deal, if Yata was right about the father's death being the payment. _Fifteen_. So young even humans considered him a child.

But hadn't he supposedly been a _smart_ fifteen-year-old? Hadn't he considered for a moment what Yata would be feeling when this all came to a head?

Izumo supposed he shouldn't speculate. Not until he had all the facts.

"Kusanagi-san..." said Yata, as if begging for comfort Izumo couldn't bring him.

He could only try to focus the boy's mind. "We talked about this beforehand," he said. "None of you are expected to go into Hell, and it will take some doing for us Nephilim to get you Hell-proofed as it were anyway. We wouldn't dream of bringing Anna down there, either—so the limit is two, plus Eric if he wants to."

Eric nodded to say he would, and that was all that needed to be not-said. Anna, on the other hand, had more to say.

"I'll come too," she said—looking quite determined for so young a half-angel.

"Out of the question," Izumo told her plainly. Then he turned to Totsuka to head him off before he could say something stupid. "And not a word out of you about it either. You all live under my roof, you'll follow my rules when it comes to this."

Totsuka held up his hands, smiling. "I wasn't going to say anything," he protested.

Learning of this 'soul-burning' technique Mikoto had spoken of had cheered Totsuka up, something Izumo felt they'd be talking about later. It was the way Totsuka was, to be sure, and it didn't seem to be bothering the kids, but Izumo was beginning to foresee trouble down the line if the younger man couldn't bring himself to accept for a moment even the least amount of cynicism unless 'eternal damnation' was on the table. It was impractical.

Of course, Totsuka's father had been an Angel of Peace. That substance mixed with that of humanity made for an odd result, as he patted Anna's head with a grin.

"You stay here and keep watch in case anything happens on this end, Anna-chan."

That, meant as a dismissive consolation to a child though it may have been, was actually an unpleasant thought. It wasn't as though HOMRA didn't have other enemies who might take advantage of their angel's sojourn into Hell.

"Chitose, Dewa," Izumo said sharply, "When we're through the portal I want the two of you to conceal everyone and take yourselves to the Golds—don't," he added hastily on seeing a multitude of soured expressions, "tell them anything about Fushimi-kun selling his soul. Tell them only that he's been abducted. They owe us big time for allowing those assholes to do what they did while wearing _their_ masks."

"But—"

"Yata," he ignored Bandou's 'but' and turned to the slightly-shaking smaller boy instead. "You're with us." He glanced up at the crowd, and gave them his most serious expression. "Who else wants to take the plunge?"

Glances were exchanged. Izumo didn't blame them for not jumping at the bit. Frankly he'd have been disappointed at their obliviousness if they had. But the pause was small.

"There's no doubt about it," Kamamoto announced. "After Yata-san and Eric, I'm the best against demons, so I guess it'll be me." He sighed. "Hope they have good katsudon in Hell..."

"Well they have a few demons skilled with a kitchen knife," said Totsuka lightly, "but I don't know if I'd trust their ingredients, Kamamoto-kun."

Before Izumo could say that was enough, and that they should get a move on as soon as they possibly could to spare Fushimi any pain they could, his attention was diverted as Mikoto—who had been standing almost perfectly still and peering at the ruined church before them—abruptly began moving towards the door.

"Mikoto?"

He wouldn't have expected a response, but the lack of one still annoyed him. Mikoto continued trudging up the gravel path and stopped in front of a particular gravestone heading a curbed space. There was a suspiciously dark spot on the pale stone, still wet towards the centre in the moonlight.

Izumo cringed and shut his eyes.

Then Anna ran forward, towards Mikoto, and though no one said anything for now Izumo stood firmly by his earlier decision not to let the poor girl get anywhere near a doorway to Hell. Those Gold assholes had made her spend long periods gazing into the abyss, trying to reverse her powers of Sight to allow her to be seen by their quarry and entice it into their parlour, and it was still difficult for her to talk about it—it, and the other experiments they'd done.

No, he wasn't putting her through that again if it wasn't necessary. Still, he couldn't help but admire the determination on her face when she briefly stopped next to Mikoto, met his eyes and gave him a sharp nod, then brought her marble out and held it up to her eye.

Looking around the curb stained with what could only have been Fushimi's blood, she seemed to catch her eye on something almost at once, and dashed forward towards the path to retrieve it. In the darkness it was difficult to make out, but seeing the small light glinting off cracked frames made it clear enough.

Mikoto accepted the glasses with a pat to Anna's head when she presented them to him. He in turn passed them along to Yata.

"Stupid monkey," the boy hissed, almost sobbing. "What's he thinking going around without these? He can't read for shit without them."

"Yata-chan..." Totsuka began, but Yata just angrily shoved the glasses into his pocket.

Only out of the corner of his eye had Izumo been watching Anna raise her marble once more. He focussed his attention on the moon; and in the distance the ship of the Eternal Guardian Angel, as if it would bring him some measure of peace, or else perhaps to wonder what exactly the angel was supposed to be guarding.

But that was when Anna gasped so sharply that he was by her side in an instant, as the marble dropped to the stones below and clacked against them.

"Anna!" he called to her.

Her face was paler even than was usual for her. Her eyes wide with a fear he'd never seen her show before, not even when they'd battled to free her from her captors. And as she pointed at the church in front of them, she shook.

"Mikoto!" she said, soft and yet with urgency.

He was slow and seemingly calm as he approached her other side, while the rest of the boys stood behind them apprehensively.

"What is it?" Mikoto asked.

Slowly, she turned her head so that their eyes could meet.

"There's someone still inside," she said.

Mikoto's eyes narrowed. With one look to Izumo they both were in agreement, and Izumo stood up to address the others.

"Totsuka; you take Anna and stay at the back. The rest of you use your usual formation, we don't know what's in there, and it could be dangerous."

"Is it the Fox, though?" asked Kamamoto.

Anna shook her head vehemently. "It's someone else."

"A demon?" Izumo inquired.

She nodded. Then her eyes widened and with a soft intake of breath she looked up to Mikoto again.

"Mikoto... Saruhiko is also still inside."

Alarm bells rang in Izumo's head; blaring out the word 'TRAP! TRAP! TRAP!', and to demonstrate just how effective that trap was, poor Yata didn't even pause to breathe before he leapt out towards the church—even forgetting his skateboard. Izumo had to lunge forward to restrain him, enduring the instinctive jab the boy's elbow gave him as he pulled him back.

"Wait!" he cried.

But while Yata had little choice bound as he was, Mikoto didn't take any longer to begin his own stalk towards the tattered remains of the church door.

"Mikoto!"

Izumo called after him in vain. The angel barely had to kick a fallen timber out of the way to get into the main building and with a groan of frustration Izumo had no choice but to release the struggling Yata and beckon the others to follow him into the building.

What there was of it. The roof had fallen long ago, and there was little glass left in the windows. Dusty fallen leaves littered the edges of the huge space—and strangely, so did the old pews, as though some huge force in the centre of the room had pushed them all out to the edges.

To the untrained eye it would look like there was nothing in the centre of the aisle; but Izumo could see two things quite clearly. First, the remains of the Alighieri-particles that caused the depths of Hell to appear iridescent to the human eye covered a large part of that area, and the fact that there was so much there that hadn't yet decayed spoke to a massive energy exchange—something big had gone into Hell there, and something big had been pulled out at the same time; and violently so.

What shape this violence may have taken had only one clue: the second noticeable stain on the stone floor, and that was a faintly smoking circle that spoke of the remains of a Devil's Trap, in which a demon had been caught and exorcised.

This all took about a second to digest. What was more important was the body floating in front of the altar at the other end of the room.

"Saruhiko!" shouted Yata. Izumo was lucky he'd stayed right next to him, thus able to hold him back for the third time that night.

"It might be a trap," he hissed. "And you'll do no good for him if you fall into it!"

"Let me go!" the boy growled, but Izumo held firm and turned his head to the others. "You stay back too, Eric," he warned. "There was at least one Devil's Trap here and I don't know how it might affect you."

The pale-haired boy froze up, then nodded, and took a step back—remaining just outside the room where Totsuka and Anna passed him to go inside. Yata continued to struggle even as they too were passed, and the other two Nephilim approached Suoh, as he stood on the edge of the circle where the trap had been.

_Just a little longer, Yata_ , Izumo thought. _There's no way we'll risk losing you too._

"Anna?" Mikoto asked.

Gripping Totsuka's hand tightly, Anna put her marble to her eye once more, and trained that eye on Fushimi. Then she gasped again—but this time without fear. Indeed, there was something hopeful in her expression.

"Mikoto," she said. "The bite on his neck is gone."

...

...

... What?

The sheer impossibility loosened his grip enough that Yata almost slipped through it, and Izumo held on to him as much as to remind himself of reality as anything else.

The angel frowned. "You can't see it anymore?" he tried.

Anna shook her head. "It's gone," she insisted. "The black spider webs too. But there's another mark instead."

Yata didn't stop struggling, but he calmed himself down enough that he could listen to what was being said and ask, "What kind of mark?" with both anger and fear in his voice.

"Like an eye," she said. "Sideways-on, next to Mikoto's brand. And the lines that are coming out from it aren't spider webs; they're like... puzzle pieces."

Mikoto looked sharply at her, like that rang an alarm bell for him.

"... and they aren't black," Anna continued. "They're blue."

It was strange.

Izumo had no idea why that announcement sucked the air from the room the way it did. He was sure no one else but Mikoto did either. It must have been the slow, stunned way the angel's eyes began to widen that did it; the way he turned, like a lion who'd realised there was a tiger standing across the way.

His arm extended and gestured for Anna and Totsuka to get back, while small crimson flames began to trickle down his back in preparation for him to unfold his wings.

He sighed.

"Munakata," he said, his voice a tone Izumo had never heard from him before, and so could not describe exactly.

The name though, that he recognised, and from the look on Anna's face she hadn't forgotten either. Such a short few months it had been, even if it felt already like she'd been a part of them forever.

Without letting him pause to think, however, a low voice answered—

"Suoh Mikoto. It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

Like liquid spreading onto a cloth the demon materialised; revealing that Fushimi had not been floating in the air after all, but rather lying in his lap while he'd been invisible. Izumo probably would have noticed him himself within a minute, but this served them just as well.

The demon looked around the same age Mikoto looked; near-black hair with a blue sheen just slightly longer than average and a face as attractive as you'd expect from a demon powerful enough to choose its own form; just like the rest of the 'form'. The glasses and the long, old-fashioned blue coat made him look particularly prim, however, and Izumo was always nervous around demons who gave off that vibe because it was atypical for one of them to put much effort into controlling themselves—usually only the powerful ones did it.

From what he'd gleaned in their discussion with the Gold Mages, this was a King-level demon before them; one as close to Mikoto in strength as to make there no difference between their capabilities in practice, and that was extremely worrying.

But the most worrying thing was how Izumo had known long before now and the creature's ' _it's been quite a while'_ , since Anna had first mentioned the name that Mikoto had met this demon before, and how Mikoto of all people had refused to say a word about it since.

_Mikoto. What happened between you and this person?_

"Don't tell me," said Mikoto, with a snort. "This is the part where I say, 'not long enough', and we go at it like the good old days?"

The demon blinked.

"Why Suoh, you haven't changed a bit. Even after I destroyed one of your enemies for you and repossessed his contracts—how ungrateful."

At first the words sounded only serious, laced with disapproval, but Izumo was certain he heard a touch of playfulness within them too, and couldn't help but notice that while the edges of Fushimi's sleeves were black and charred, the severe burns he'd had on his hands when the Fox had flown him off the roof had vanished as though they'd never been, and his skin was smooth and white on the arm resting on his body.

When he peered closer, he too could begin to see those blue jigsaw-lines.

"I'm supposed to be grateful that you stole from some asshole who stole from me, and have your mark on one of my people?" Mikoto asked, a few sparks flying from his back.

" 'Stole from you'?" the demon echoed. "Don't be delusional. The Fox had quite a few illegal contracts which I'll need to sort through, but this wasn't one of them. I'm sorry."

The strange thing was, he actually sounded it—and Mikoto didn't call him out on an empty apology, so it must have sounded genuine to him too.

And yet, he seemed to greatly dislike...

Or was it dislike? Maybe. There was definitely something about this Mikoto hated. But he wasn't sure the hatred was for the demon in particular; he knew Mikoto too well to be fooled by his words.

Munakata continued, "Suoh, you know there were some humans who not so long ago were foolishly trying to summon me. I feel in the interest of transparency it would be prudent for me to tell you that they did so in part because the Grand Gold Magus had expressed an interest in making a deal with me—not, before you take any issue, _that_ kind of deal. You know I have no desire to possess human souls."

"Not when I last saw you, you didn't," Mikoto said, nodding towards Fushimi.

"Well, we'll get to that. As it turns out, the efforts of those rogue mages did leave a path open for the Magus to get my attention, and, after much discussion, we have come to an accord—concerning you."

A remarkably unpleasant smile twisted Mikoto's features. Izumo remembered Kokujoji threatening to bring another player onto the board if Mikoto kept causing chaos the way he had been, and while Mikoto had pointed out the Host would never allow two angels active in the same city, the old man had only stared back and changed the subject.

"So that's what the old fart meant." The angel shook his head. "I should burn him beyond ash."

"You'll do no such thing," Munakata said. "Suoh, you are an Angel of Chaos. Whatever good you're doing in the Human World; you've upset the balance with your presence, and you know it. How else would something like the Fox have been able to enter this world so easily, even with a soul looking for it to damn them? What were you planning to do when you came here—burn this child's soul clean?"

Mikoto averted his eyes. That and the conciliatory admonishments coming from the demon were serving to put Isumo's thoughts in a tail-spin, and beside him the expression on Yata's face looked like everyone had suddenly started speaking another language.

"I thought it might have been something that stupid, even if I'd hoped that even you had more sense than that. Well, he's mine now, so you'll have to go through me."

"Yours?" Mikoto chuckled. "And what exactly are you going to do with him, Munakata? Because if you think you're taking the poor kid down to Hell, I'll be doing more than going through you. I'll tear you apart."

"As if you could," said the demon, with a smirk. "But haven't you figured it out? I'm going to be staying on Earth for the foreseeable future, making sure you don't get into any trouble. I'm sure having an agent who was part of your little clan will come in handy."

It was then Mikoto displayed his wings at last; his fire lighting up the room like their very own midnight sun. The remaining Alighieri-particles on the floor burst into dust almost immediately, and the burning wind ruffled the hair of all those present.

"Oh?" said Munakata. "Did you want to fight me? But surely even you realise what an unwise decision that would be, don't you? So close to a human city?"

So he said, but his own wings spread out that very moment; pale and ghostly, feathers shimmering like they were made of glass, with little blue lightning cores running through every one.

"What can I say?" said Mikoto. "You just really have a knack for pissing me off."

Izumo saw the problem at once.

These two were almost certainly an even match. If they fought at full power—and with Fushimi in the position he was, Mikoto would indeed be fighting full power, so the demon would have to as well if he didn't was to burn to death—their own and hundreds of thousands of other lives would be put in danger.

And yet, what was the position Fushimi was in? The demon had clearly healed him. Gone to some trouble to take him back from the Fox when Mikoto had had no arguments about him not usually being interested in human souls.

As if it was something he'd done for Mikoto's sake. Or perhaps just because he hated chaos, but there was this tension between the two of them that Izumo thought could not quite be called hate, but something else. And Fushimi would remain on Earth at least for now. The pros and cons weighed heavily in favour of the two not fighting.

Mikoto's pride demanded that he _did_ fight. But there were ways to surpass Mikoto's pride. So as the demonstration of the angel and demon's respective powers flourished, and some of the stone tiles on the floor cracked under the pressure but Munakata had created a protective barrier around himself _and_ Fushimi when there was no reason to use that kind of power...

"Mikoto!" Izumo yelled. He was ignored, but with determination took another step forward. "MIKOTO!"

This time the angel turned his head, eyes of fire glaring straight at Izumo, but he persevered. There was a lot at stake after all, and an explanation that Mikoto's followers deserved before they went any further.

"We talked about this!" he cried at his friend. "Back at the bar, you said this would be Yata's decision! The situation has changed, Mikoto! So let him make his decision!"

Eyes widening, then sliding over to Yata, Mikoto thankfully let his wing's lower and the power he was displaying drop. Izumo was even more thankful that the demon did the same, sitting calmly though his nose was bleeding dark blood. His deep blue eyes fixed on Yata too.

There was silence in the church.

"Yata?" Izumo asked.

The boy blanched, looking from Mikoto, to his unconscious best friend across the room, and back to Mikoto.

"I..." he started.

 

*~*~*

 

_Saruhiko comes home on the night they had taken Misaki to the Mage for diagnosis, trying to get the image of the other boy desperately fighting back tears out of his head._

_There's a light on, and that means That Man is also home. But there's no point in trying to avoid him._

_The TV's on. Some third rate anime in which a childish-looking protagonist is screaming his desire to protect a girl right into her obnoxiously large cleavage. Niki is grinning like a madman._

_He doesn't look up from the program when he asks,_

_"How's your boyfriend, son? Do they think he'll get his hearing back?"_

_On the coffee table in front of him, the siren's teeth are laying right out in the open, next to a half-full bottle of whiskey. Saruhiko stops dead._

_Nothing matters after that._

_..._

_Or so he'd thought._

 

*~*~*


	5. The Snow Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Saruhiko wakes up in the bed of a strange man who makes him an offer he can't refuse in front of a naked woman.
> 
> Thank you all for the kudos and the comments. This chapter was slightly delayed as I had an idea for another fanfic (yes, yet another one), which should be a oneshot (this time I mean it!) that I post... at some point? IDK. Enjoy this chapter, it's a bit of a breather before the real plot picks up.

 

*~*~*

 

_He wakes up, touching his burned hands to the ice inside his head and panting, gasping, trying to calm down even as his body is wracked with shudders._

Calm the fuck down, _he tells himself._ There's nothing wrong with you.

_Each breath comes a little slower, until his hand reaches out for Misaki lying in the bedroll next to his and touches freezing flesh._

_It's Niki, naked under the sheet, white cloth over his face. Motionless._

_And then he grabs Saruhiko's hand._

_"Surprise!"_

_His heart stops._

_It wakes him up for real, but he can't bear to do anything but curl his fists around his hair and sob into his knees. If he looks up, That Man might come back. That Man might be waiting for him._

_He stays completely still, just like That Man has always told him to._

_"Eyes straight up at the mirror, kid. This won't hurt a bit."_

 

*~*~*

 

Two days later, Saruhiko woke up.

He was in a bed more than twice the size of the roll-up futon he used in the little hole in the wall he shared with Misaki, on soft brushed-cotton sheets beneath a quilted duvet. The light was dim; the curtains closed, and he could tell at once he was in a room he had never been in before as the light that floated in from the not-quite hidden window showed him the general shape and contents of his surroundings.

There were even birds singing nearby outside. As Saruhiko wracked his brains to try and remember if he knew any spells for knocking birds out of trees, he was instead reminded of the events that had lead up to this moment and sat bolt upright in the four-poster bed.

He only regretted this move for a split-second—having expected to suddenly realise how much pain his body was in and then finding that actually, he couldn’t feel any at all. Not even the dull soreness in his neck.

Without thinking about it, he brought his fingers up to touch the mark. No pain whatsoever. The same hand trailed down to his chest, where the demon's sword had pierced him right through. Still no pain, but a feeling of something—something like the sound of white noise, came to him when he pressed it.

Then, those fingers pressed hard enough that the beating of his heart touched the prints, soft and quick.

He was alive.

He was still on Earth, and alive.

_But,_ he thought, hand clenching into a trembling fist against his heart, _for how long?_

What purpose did 'Munakata Reisi' have in store for him?

PDA and watch both lost back on the roof when the Fox had battled Suoh, his mind travelled along two paths at the same time; with too many questions for him to do the sensible thing and address one at a time.

Firstly, where was he? How could he get out? Was any of this absurdity even real? That last one especially was a question that gripped him with foreboding. Since when did lucky breaks happen to him, after all?

Secondly, who the fuck _was_ Munakata Reisi? What was he planning? How did Saruhiko fit into it?

What had happened after he'd fallen unconscious, when Munakata had said Suoh and the rest were approaching—

"Mi... saki."

He whispered the name to himself, knowing that 'Suoh and the rest' included him and so Misaki had encountered Munakata, and he in turn had been in the vicinity of Suoh—who was not known for his unpredictability when it came to dealing with those he saw as messing with his people.

As if Saruhiko had even been one of 'his people', right from the very beginning. But Suoh wasn't the type to pay attention to details like that, and more importantly Munakata had made it sound like they knew each other.

Pulling the blankets away from his legs, he swung them over the side of the bed and immediately almost collapsed to the fine-woven carpet beneath. His legs were weak. Pitiful. They shook ridiculously when he tried to stand up on them again, like they would when he was ill, and yet he felt fine...

Holding onto the bed for support he raised himself up, knees bent awkwardly. Misaki had been there when the angel and demon had met. What had happened to him?

"Misaki."

Stupidly, he looked around as if expecting the smaller boy to be there, with him, with the demon—wherever it was they were. This definitely wasn't a place belonging to any of the HOMRA clan; even if Suoh still paid for upkeep on the grand house he'd been given when he'd arrived on Earth and immediately rejected in favour of slumming it with the punks downtown, he wouldn't have had it decorated blue.

The floor and furniture was made of smooth dark-varnished mahogany; the frame of the bed the dresser, chair and wardrobe across the room very finely cut—the walls were white above the thigh-high border. Below that, the wallpaper was blue with paisley designs in black, the same as the embroidered curtains. Even in this low light he could see the powder blue cornflower pattern sewn on to the royal satin hangings on the bed; the same colour as the sheets, the cushions on the chairs, the carpet that stretched out from the bed with complicated designs in gold and silver...

_"Your tongue is blue."_

Saruhiko brought his hand up to his neck again, a little shiver running through him at that memory.

_No_ , he told himself. _Forget that until you figure out what happened to Misaki._

He took a shaking step forward, towards the window.

_And what happened to you._

With one arm on the wall for support he gripped the edge of the nearer curtain and pulled it open towards himself, flooding the room with light. His eyes narrowed, watered just a little—the sun was visible, but also behind a thin cloud cover; a yellow-white disc in a grey-white sky. He was at least four floors up in a building he didn't immediately recognise from where he was standing, though he could see the steel towers of the inner city weren't far off.

At least, they didn't seem to be. With the magical intuition Saruhiko had amassed, he could quite clearly tell there was a barrier around the building he was in, and that could have made it look like anything Munakata wanted it to from either side of its boundaries. It all depended on what the demon's game was.

On his right, the birds twittered again: nightingales. Unusual to come across as far into urban territory as they seemed to be, but that wasn't conclusive of anything. Saruhiko sighed and pulled the other curtain back, then took a second look around the room.

Around the other side of the bed, previously hidden from view by the hangings that were drawn on that side, Saruhiko noticed the corner of a large desk in the same style as the rest, with a black-leather swivel chair in front of it. He could see just enough to notice a piece of paper sitting on the edge, held in place with a blue-agate paperweight.

There was something written on the paper. He staggered away from the window, legs slightly better now that he'd been on them for a few minutes; making it first to the bed and then along to the desk without falling. A carriage clock in a wooden frame on a previously unseen bedside table told him the time and date, which he took note of before he looked at the paper.

Two days since the Fox had come to collect. Twelve minutes past noon.

He looked down at the letter that had been left to him. He was almost surprised the ink wasn't blue, but black; except that on blinking a few times he realised that the paper was a light cerulean. Figured. Although blue was traditionally more a 'heavenly' colour, but then if Suoh could have his thing for red he supposed there was nothing stopping a demon from having an even more pronounced blue-motif.

The writing was ridiculously tidy; each character looked like it had been written with a calligraphy pen. Saruhiko thought back to his half-delirious musings about being in a stupid dream—now the demon was coming off more like the love interest of a clichéd romance novel.

Well. Saruhiko was hardly the delicate-flower heroine about to be swept away from her humdrum life by the cultured mysterious stranger. This guy now owned his soul. Saruhiko was nothing but an asset to him—probably a way of getting at Suoh somehow.

But he read the letter anyway.

" **Fushimi Saruhiko—**

**I am pleased to inform you that the repossession of your soul has been achieved without further bloodshed. The Angel of Chaos, known on Earth as 'Suoh Mikoto', has agreed to a temporary truce; the conditions of which I would be obliged to discuss with you in person, along with the other particulars of your situation.**

**Please feel free, should you awaken before my return from the Mihashira Tower, to move about at your leisure within the protective barrier around the mansion. I enclose a floor plan of said mansion for your convenience. All things considered, however, I should not advise leaving the barrier at this stage, as the status of your soul is no longer concealed and I understand this city contains a rather high concentration of Exorcists.**

**Should you feel unable to leave this room, please ring the bell that is in the top drawer of the bedside table, and one of my servants will attend to you to the best of his abilities. I wish you a speedy recovery either way.**

**I should return no later than one o'clock, whereupon I look forward to developing a good working relationship between us.**

**Yours faithfully,**

**Munakata Reisi** "

This... was not the kind of letter one expected to receive from a demon. Those high up enough the demon hierarchy that they did things like send letters—let alone sending such formal ones—were not the type who would be sending such things to a human, at the very least not one they owned.

Frankly this wasn't the type of letter Saruhiko expected to receive from anyone; the one time his mother had summoned him to account for himself after Niki's death had been the closest to this that he could think of, except that while she'd been just as formal if not more, she hadn't been half as polite.

(not that he wouldn't have ignored it either way)

Enough of that though. He needed to focus on the words.

Why he felt relieved to hear the meeting between Suoh and Munakata had resulted in no bloodshed, he couldn't say; the probability that Munakata was lying was high—that was what demons did, after all. Problem was he wanted to believe, and with the words right there the stupid side of him had immediately thought, _thank fuck!_

On the other hand, he felt it wasn't an unlikely turn of events either; unless the demon had killed Suoh and everyone in HOMRA and somehow been in a state where he was able to write Saruhiko practically calligraphic letters and prance around wherever only two days later—assuming the time on the clock wasn't also a lie.

Suoh Mikoto wasn't one to do things by half, after all; that was the only choice Saruhiko saw had been ahead of them. 'No bloodshed', or 'battle to the death'.

His stomach growled.

Well.

He sure as fuck wasn't going to be calling any of the weird demon's servants for help. God only knew what they'd been given permission to do to him—what little research had been possible into the fate of Damned souls suggested they went straight to the bottom of Hell's hierarchy. So he stretched his legs, shaking each one in turn a bit to try and stimulate the muscles and carried the message and the map beneath it to the door. He belatedly realised at this point that he was wearing simple pyjamas he'd never seen before in his life, and took a half-moment to wonder whether it would have been creepier for Munakata or for one of his 'servants' to have been the one to undress and redress him.

Then he banished it from his mind. Scratch that earlier assessment of his pain level—he was _starving_. And he hadn't felt starved since the aftermath of that one time Niki had found the spell to stop someone from being able to eat actual food items and enthusiastically tried it out.

On Saruhiko, obviously. There was a memory he could have done without popping into his head the minute he stepped out into the high-ceiling corridor, as wide from end to end as Kusanagi's bar in its entirety and the same colour and style as the walls in the room he'd woken up in.

That indescribable feeling, humiliation more than anything else, of being compelled to eat the stuffing out of the lounge chairs; trying to do it out of Niki's sight and inevitably failing and finding himself beneath that awful grin—he'd hated eating anything ever since.

_"I said I'd eat the vegetables for you, but you'd better eat the rest of it yourself, or I'll put a stun spell on you and drag you to a fucking doctor!"_

Misaki. All that said, it had always been easier to eat than to risk Misaki trying to figure out why he didn't. Asking Niki outright probably would have been his first port of call.

Idiot. Even after Niki had died...

But whatever. Could a fragment of even something as rare and powerful as a Philosopher's Stone have somehow cured this too? He doubted it. This feeling was probably stress-related, as pathetic as that sounded.

His stomach growled again.

The map was supremely easy to follow, and yet the house was enormous. Empty of anything but carpets and traditional Japanese art in decorated mahogany frames until he got to the first wide staircase and the art theme became French Impressionism, but Saruhiko knew he was being monitored somehow.

It was slow going down the stairs, and fortunate that there was a small kitchen marked on the next floor down, with: **'Kitchen. One may obtain food here.'** almost making Saruhiko laugh despite everything.

This was not a demon who had spent much time on Earth, he guessed. No wonder he'd been so nonchalant about licking a guy's neck.

And as it turned out he had the opportunity to ask himself, because Munakata Reisi was already in the kitchen when he opened the door, stirring soup around a bowl.

"Ah, Fushimi-kun," he greeted, smiling. "You found my message. Hungry?"

 

*~*~*

 

_There is a proverb that goes: 'he who has not dug a well, should not steal a minaret'._

_Munakata tells him this one day, soon after his first meeting with Misaki since that day on the roof. Saruhiko thinks at first he's talking about their relationship—that he himself is the 'minaret' that has been stolen._

_But later, he begins to wonder..._

 

*~*~*

 

The demon had made chicken noodle soup. Of all things.

Munakata Reisi sat across from him with his green tea in an authentic-looking ceramic cup. Like many demons, he seemed to be the type to find an outfit he liked and stick with it, and he was wearing the same fancy coat he had been two days ago, seemingly over the same ensemble except Saruhiko hadn't really taken note; what with the sword in his chest and all.

He'd actually splashed out for gourmet udon too, which Saruhiko figured he might as well eat. If the other shoe was going to drop then at this point there wasn't much he could do about it.

"How are you feeling?" the demon asked, once they'd settled down at the small table.

No words came to mind, so Saruhiko just clicked his tongue and shrugged. He was far more concerned about Misaki, but didn't want to give the demon ammunition that might have involved him.

The soup was delicious.

(No doubt poisoned, or drugged, or cursed in some way. He ate it anyway, since that other shoe hadn't fallen yet.)

"I'm glad to hear it. I'm afraid though I researched humans as thoroughly as I could before I embarked upon this endeavour, the one thing that worried me was the unfortunate unpredictable reactions to stressful situations your kind endures." His blue tongue flickered out over his bottom lip and the look in his eyes became more penetrating, his smile less polite. "But you seem to be adequately durable."

Was that supposed to be a compliment?

"I'm sure you're wondering what became of your fellow HOMRA clansmen."

"Not really," said Saruhiko, trying to sound as bored as possible. That was easy enough, seeing as it was true for all but one of them.

Munakata continued nonetheless. "I won't deny the meeting had its tense moments," he said, then sipped his tea. "But fortunately Suoh Mikoto and I have... met, before; and he agreed to a twenty-one day truce, at the end of which I am to produce you for his inspection. If it is deemed that I have not been mistreating you, which I can assure you I do not intend to, he will allow our current situation to proceed without trying to kill either of us."

If not, Saruhiko was sure he didn't have to ask what would happen—though even if Suoh did kill him, he supposed he'd only be passed on to whoever Munakata's next of kin was.

What he did wonder about was what exactly his 'situation' was. But instead of that, he asked:

"So you only have to refrain from mistreating me for twenty-one days," and smirked. "Another foolproof plan from the great Suoh Mikoto."

"Oh, I've no doubt the conditions for this truce remain in principle even after the three-week grace period is up, and since I plan to remain on Earth for the foreseeable future, he'll have plenty of opportunity to check up on you."

Saruhiko could see it now: a future of bumping into Suoh in the supermarket, with—" _Oh, Fushimi—how's being eternally Damned working out for you_?", " _Well, you know; same-old, same-old,"_ cheerfully swapped back and forth. But then he couldn't imagine Suoh without his entourage, slouching about after him and scaring the other shoppers with their hoodlum faces. Faces that would have seen him too, if such an encounter should have ever come to pass.

Misaki's face. Misaki looking at him with that confusion, that horror, that disbelief—he'd always assumed that when the end came he'd be sucked into Hell and that would be the last he'd see of that stupid face, but now...

Now Misaki knew everything, or enough that Saruhiko wouldn't have the first clue what to say to him when they did inevitably see each other again—in three weeks at the very least when he came for his 'inspection'.

Hah. Maybe he should just tell Suoh the demon was making his life a nightmare and to kill them both.

... even in jest that was a stupid thing to think.

"And that will be that for all eternity, will it?" he asked.

Munakata sipped from his tea again and then put the cup down. "Eternity is a much longer story," he said. "For now the present is concerning enough. There are certain rogue elements operating on Earth I'm sure I don't have to tell you about."

"JUNGLE?" Saruhiko asked, frowning. He hadn't expected Munakata to have had any interest in them.

The demon nodded. "Suoh Mikoto, though he would deny such a thing, would fight against these elements for justice. I, anti-chaos demon that I am, find it equally disagreeable that they would disrupt the already so fragile order of the human world. The Gold Mages would fight them for both reasons; it is only practical that our three sides find a way to interact civilly."

"Was it the Gold Mages who brought you over here?"

"The rebel sect laid the path, using that Nephilim girl as they did. However it was not until they were destroyed that Kokujoji-san was able to draw my attention to that path in order to cross over. He believes my presence will balance out Suoh's... chaotic nature as he hopes Suoh will curtail anything overly 'demonic' about my presence." He smiled. "Such as humans understand 'demonic'. Though I believe Kokujoji-san is more intuitive than most."

Saruhiko didn't particularly care about the demon's cultural identity, or whatever issues were threatening to surface—the idea of fighting JUNGLE was far too troubling.

"Are you saying the Court in Hell and the Host are both worried about the same organisation on Earth?" he asked. "That they'd work together to take measures against them?"

"Not exactly," Munakata told him, wincing a little. "The Court isn't quite as... organised, as all that. And the situation is complicated by lack of information. The Prince himself is concerned a certain demon by the name of Miwa Ichigen is helping JUNGLE; one of his servants has been seen in the company of members while the man himself and the rest of his household have been missing for some time—and he has been known to defy the Prince in the past."

Miwa Ichigen? Saruhiko hadn't heard the name before. But before he had the chance to ask for more, Munakata pulled a thick sheaf of papers seemingly out of thin air and summoned up a fountain pen to tap against them.

"However, there are matters even more pressing. Before we begin to work together, we must discuss your wages."

The implications of JUNGLE warring against Heaven, Hell and the Mages were staggering, for the entire world as much as for Saruhiko himself—the true nature of Munakata's plans for this, assuming he was telling the truth, annoyingly opaque, but Saruhiko forgot all this when that word was spoken and dropped his spoon back into his bowl.

Wages.

_Wages?_

It made no sense. You didn't pay wages to a chair for allowing you to sit on it. You didn't pay wages to a dog for guarding your house. And you didn't pay wages to a Damned soul who had given you (or your predecessor) his entire being for a sum already paid.

Munakata took the top section of stapled papers in hand and passed it across the table.

"I asked Kokujoji-san's secretary to help me draw these up this morning," he informed him. "I understand it is customary on Earth to have a more standardised contract, so I thought that as long as we remain on Earth we should adhere to convention."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," said Saruhiko bluntly. "Wages? You're going to pay me to work for you? You're a demon; you _own_ me."

"True. But, as they say, 'when in Rome'. Are you comfortable working for the official 'living wage'?"

"Living wage?" Saruhiko repeated—though he didn't know why he was surprised; if the demon was going to pay him at all why wouldn't he have paid him enough to live on unsupported?

"Room and board are included," Munakata added.

There was just nothing Saruhiko could say. Blinking, he shook his head a little and asked instead,

"And what work, exactly, would I be doing for this wage?"

The little flashes of possibilities that ran through his mind ranged from assassinating the demon's enemies, to scrubbing the floors, to getting fucked with his wrists tied to that stupidly big bed back in the room upstairs, but all of them seemed equally likely and absurd.

Munakata, meanwhile, took a moment to finish the last of his cup then clapped his hands together.

"I'm glad you asked," he said. "It's going to be quite a job. Do you think you can manage a trip downstairs?"

Saruhiko drank the remaining broth left in the bowl and squirmed on one leg then the other. They certainly seemed more stable than they had when he'd first woken up.

"I was completely healed, right?" he asked, as though bored. "If I couldn't walk properly even after that then you _would_ have bought yourself a lemon, wouldn't you?"

His legs still felt a little numb after he stood up, but he pushed past that, and at a gesture from the still-smiling Munakata, preceded him out into the corridor.

This whole thing was just feeling more and more like a dream. And not the 'I married the love of my life and we live together on a tropical island with the dolphins' dream-come-true, if that was the kind of thing regular people daydreamed about. No, the was like a bona-fide night-dream, the 'I was in my high-school cafeteria watching a movie star film a series of lectures on Aesop's Fables, when he stopped filming to ask if I'd got the e-mail he'd sent me. When I tried to check for it in my inbox, all the letters dissolved off my keyboard,' type.

At any moment he expected to wake up in Hell, and if that was what awaited him he couldn't help but hope the dream lasted for a long, long time, because he may have found Munakata weird beyond belief and have been completely dumbfounded by the situation in general, but fuck—he did not want to go to Hell.

It almost made him ashamed of himself though, to be so afraid. He'd thought he'd been resigned, until it had stared him right in the face. He'd thought he'd had no regrets, that Misaki would be safe and any soul whose own owner would give it away so lightly must have truly been as worthless as it was treated—so the old proverbs said.

Why should anyone have mourned the loss of such a soul? Why should anything have mattered at all with his ties to Misaki cut the way they had been? He had put the whole HOMRA clan in danger by not telling them of the Fox's plan to kill Totsuka—hell, by joining them in the first place. He'd pulled a knife out on a traumatised child for seeming like she might, just _might_ expose him.

He hadn't done a decent thing in his life, and he'd never cared to either—what was the point? So how could he think he didn't deserve Hell?

Why should he be so relieved to still be on Earth, thinking: _'maybe this won't be so bad. Maybe this Munakata is truly not interested in tormenting me'_.

Why should he have thought something in the vicinity of 'good' should happen to him?

"I'm going to require quite a bit from you, I'm afraid," Munakata said, snapping him out of his thoughts as they began to descend another staircase. Saruhiko didn't know where they were going and was a little too overwhelmed to try and make the effort to remember the route just then. "There are many areas we need to focus on."

They turned the corner towards a set of huge arched windows; running down three storeys of the building at least—looking out onto a grand courtyard on the lowest level with a grand fountain sitting in the midst of a huge lily-laden water feature. Saruhiko saw only a moment of it before Munakata guided him towards another door.

"Maintaining order in the city will fall to myself and my servants; including you if the opportunity arises," he was saying. "I've had some time to inspect your combat abilities since my arrival and I found them most impressive for your age. We shall have to find time to improve on them as well."

He opened the door.

"But right now your main focus will be on cataloguing the former possessions of the Fox."

The room beyond was like a library, vast and tall with row upon row of shelves higher than Saruhiko by a good few feet. There were thirty of these rows at least—half were empty, but the other half was filled with boxes of too many different kinds for Saruhiko to take in at a glance and from some of them, faint echoes of screams could still be heard.

"I'm afraid I hadn't quite realised the extent of what I was letting myself in for," Munakata said, sounding completely unbothered by that fact. "I only really initiated the repossession to get _you._ "

Saruhiko looked at him sharply, but the demon didn't seem to notice.

"The work should be simple enough for someone of your calibre," he went on cheerfully. "I have already ordered the equipment necessary for you to form a digital database, and should be much obliged if you could prepare a written report for me at the end of each working day detailing your progress—a page or so should do. Any illegal contracts should be reported directly to me, for the rest I'll allow you to use your own judgement."

In a flash Saruhiko found himself mentally preparing for the task, categorising his previous 'owner's possessions, contrasting this 'database', the necessary safety precautions—it was almost... motivating. And something caught his attention almost at once.

"Not all of these possessions are human souls?" he asked.

"Indeed. There are numerous physical artefacts both from Earth and Hell among our ill-gotten gains, and possibly even some from Heaven. On top of that, there's something I've been most eager to see for myself."

He stepped into the room and Saruhiko followed, eyes darting around the various boxes on either side of the little lane between the shelves the demon lead him down, approaching a long table beyond them where one intricately-patterned cube was already out and waiting for them.

Saruhiko frowned. "This doesn't seem like it's from Heaven, Hell or Earth," he pointed out.

"You _do_ have very good supernatural perception, for a human," Munakata said. "I believe this originates from what humans call the 'Otherworld'."

He paused. Then rather slyly asked,

"If you had to guess, Fushimi-kun, what would you say was inside this box?"

Something powerful, that went without saying—if Saruhiko wasn't mistaken it was the most powerful thing in the room apart from Munakata himself, who far outdrew it. But this would certainly have given Saruhiko a bad day if it had been used against him.

'Been used', he'd thought, but the energy inside was active; fluctuating—alive.

"Is it a youkai?" he asked, surprised by his own words even as he made the guess.

"I believe it is," said Munakata. "Well done. Let's meet them properly, shall we?"

He reached for his sword, and Saruhiko drew back towards the shelves with apprehension for more than just a possible battle with a powerful youkai. The last time he'd seen that sword drawn it had gone through his chest, after all.

But when Munakata drew it now he was shocked at how... how could he put it? How his heart leapt not with fear, but with excitement at the sight. How he felt that sword being drawn was somehow one of those illusive 'good' things, even knowing what had happened last time.

The demon's eyes glowed just a touch around the rim of their irises. He tapped the box three times with the sword.

Instantly, the box shattered with the sound of breaking ice, and a wind as strong and cold as a blizzard blew Saruhiko's eyes shut before he see what was inside, forming ice crystals on his clothes before it dissipated into the archive.

Saruhiko brushed them off indignantly and looked up again, ready to make an annoyed comment to...

... the naked woman on the floor.

Well. That was unexpected.

Golden-haired and snowy-skinned, the strong-looking well-formed figure uncurled itself slowly from its initial crouched position; arms out as if preparing to defend herself and thus completely bearing her extremely large breasts.

There was not a hint of embarrassment on her face from this though, only suppressed anger, wariness, and somehow dignity coming through eyes ringed with dark circles.

"Hello," said Munakata.

The woman blinked, eyes losing their anger with surprising speed as she stood up, head cocked.

"You are not the Fox," she observed.

Saruhiko clapped his hands slowly. The woman glared at him, but spoke instead to Munakata again.

"You... have freed me, from my prison?"

Munakata gave a single nod. "What was once in possession of the demon called the 'Fox' has passed to me. My name is Munakata Reisi."

She was the first who didn't appear to recognise the name, only taking in her surroundings with apparently more speed than Saruhiko had. He did wish she'd take in the fact she had no clothes on soon though.

"Awashima Seri," she introduced herself. "That... abomination tricked me—captured me. I feel as though it might have been a long time."

"It probably has been," Munakata agreed. "But you are free to go now; it seems this box was a prison for a captive enemy, not a house for a servant, so I have no claim on you."

'Awashima' clenched her fists. "I would never lower myself to serve such a repulsive being—"

Saruhiko found himself clicking his tongue again.

"—I am Yuki-Onna; a Snow Woman of the mountains. Though I exist as a harbinger of death, I would never serve the depraved whims of one who lusts for such power and self-glorification as that monster."

_Rub it in, why don't you_? Saruhiko thought, unfair as it was when she had no way of knowing he _had_ lowered himself so.

"Indeed," said Munakata. "You seem to be a woman of integrity."

_She's standing there with no clothes on and hasn't even tried to rectify it!_

"If there's anything more I can do to assist you as an apology for the actions of one whom I am ashamed to call a fellow demon, Awashima-san—"

"There is," said Awashima, and dropped down immediately onto one knee. "You have saved my life, and I can only hope you would allow me the honour of serving you in gratitude for your actions."

_Oh, god..._

"Awashima-san?" Munakata blinked. This offer prompted the first time Saruhiko had seen the demon look anything but one hundred percent collected, even when his nose had been bleeding from the strain of his battle with the Fox. "But surely I am unworthy of such an illustrious servant—"

"I pay my debts," the Snow Woman insisted—and Saruhiko had thought she might have been one. The way the room's temperature had dropped about ten degrees had been a clue. "And you are very powerful; more than worth of the service of one as lowly as myself."

This was a dream. Or maybe he'd just cracked and the gang at HOMRA had had him solemnly committed to a ward full of supernatural lunatics.

Munakata smiled.

"Well, in that case, I accept," he said, then turned around and continued smiling straight at Saruhiko.

Saruhiko looked behind himself at the thousand or so other boxes of crap the Fox had hoarded over the years, then back at the demon.

"What do you think?" Munakata asked him. "Doesn't it seem like it'll be fun?"

With a snort, Saruhiko lost the battle to keep a smile—however small—from his face, as the Snow Woman looked on with a frown.

This was ridiculous.

And the first time he'd felt able to breathe in months.

 

*~*~*

 

_That very night, Saruhiko dreams for the first time one of the three dreams that would come to him now that the prophecy of meeting Munakata has been fulfilled._

_He's standing in a softly glowing garden, the crystal moon above them shining a light too slight to be the light that lights the glimmering leaves; a space too silent to be on Earth at all._

_In the centre of the garden, which is surrounded by a white and vast desert stretching out into eternity, in the midst of a space of neatly cut grass, a stem grows up about a foot and a half above the ground. From the stem spring several leaves, and two flower buds._

_One red. One blue._

_There's something very special about this flower._

_But then from the right a man who is not a man approaches, and from the left another—both very similar, both gliding forward like the world moves for them while they stand still. The first man's silver coat gleams in the moonlight; the second is dressed in charcoal grey, his robes fluttering out behind him like wings._

_The sun begins to rise straight ahead, but the sky does not change with it; the night stars remaining where they are. The silver man moves first._

_He comes forward, and reaches for the flower. Saruhiko truly, nearly desperately wants to cry out to him to stop for a reason he cannot begin to understand, but his voice is gone, and the silver man's fingers close around the red bud._

_Then he pulls, until the bud's stem snaps._

_The red bud is set aflame in his hand, the man in grey shakes his head with disapproval. But then he steps forward and takes hold of the blue flower._

_'No, don't' Saruhiko wants to beg him._

_And pulls._

_Snap._

_As soon as the blue bud is pulled away from the rest of the stem the mouth of Hell opens up beneath them, and they all fall down into the pit below._

_Saruhiko wakes up crying, wipes his eyes and tries to put this too aside with all the rest._

_But he can't._

 

*~*~*


	6. The Contractors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Thanks for all your kudos and comments--here's the latest instalment!
> 
> In this chapter, the author forewent scenes that could easily be turned into innuendo in the author notes in favour of slipping in office-worker in-jokes, as the mundane reality of having a job begins to sink the creativity in her soul to naught...
> 
> Just kidding! Tune in next time when the innuendo I'd originally planned for this chapter might actually make it into the fic. Oh, and there'll be another chapter as well. :D

*~*~*

 

**Daily Archival Report: #5**

**Date: October 12 th**

**Summary of Acquisitions:**

  1. _Inanimate: 12 items. Refer to Section A._
  2. _Dormant: 28 items. Refer to Section B1._
  3. _Animate: Two more idiots for the moron squad. Refer to Section B2._



"Hey, whatcha writing, whatcha writing?"

Saruhiko's expression soured, and his fingers stilled on the keyboard.

The young American-Japanese soldier hovering over his shoulder and bouncing from foot to foot with pent-up energy would have seemed to an outside observer to have been equal in age or even younger than Saruhiko. But Private Doumyoji Andy had been in stasis in the Fox's collection for the past sixty-five years; ensnared into an illegal contract while enjoying shore leave from his active duty in Korea back in the early fifties, so he was really four times Saruhiko's age. Therefore he considered there to be no excuse for the man to act like such a child.

" 'How to avoid having your soul stolen, for dummies'," Saruhiko told him dryly. "It seems more people need it than I'd thought."

"Hey!" said Andy.

The other former contractor snorted beside him. "Says the guy who hardly managed to keep his _own_ soul," he pointed out.

Saruhiko's eyes narrowed. "You can see that, can you?"

He was supposed to take illegal contracts directly to Munakata so he could report them in turn to the mages, who would notify the proper authorities, but these two had materialised as soon as the seal on their prison had been ripped open; leaving Saruhiko with the necessity of being the one to explain the situation to them, recording their information on the daily report as he went.

There was still a lot he didn't know about them; or indeed the six others who'd been given priority due to the status of their contracts--faked to make it look as though they'd given up their soul of their own free will when in fact they had been captured, somewhat like Awashima had been. These ones must have somehow been overlooked. What a tragedy.

The second of them, Kamo Ryuuhou, glared. "No," he said. "But he told me." He nodded towards Doumyoji.

" _You_ could see it?" Saruhiko's eyebrows went up. After spending less than ten minutes with the man he would have been surprised if the man noticed whether or not his flies were done on a daily basis. And yet, there _was_ something not entirely human about him... "Don't tell me," he muttered. "You're also a hybrid."

"My father was a faerie!" Doumyoji said proudly. "Carried over to the great US of A from Scotland in a magic broom!"

"How charming," Saruhiko said sarcastically, adding that information to the database as well, "but I really don't care. As for me selling my soul, that was by choice, and when you meet my glorious master you'll see why. Power like his is practically incomprehensible to people like the two of you."

Petty though it may have been, it amused him to mislead people about his history and current status. There was strategic value in it also, true; but mostly it was the whole amusement thing that made him do it, he doubted these two morons were going to be much of a threat.

"Only a man with a worthless soul would treat his own soul as worthless enough to give away," quoted Doumyoji, with a huff. "That's what my Nana used to say."

"And only a man who can't hold more than two thoughts in his head at the same time would think an aphorism held up by circular reasoning enough to prove a point," Saruhiko fired back, without looking away from his screen. He clicked 'print' and pushed his chair back, thankful that the release of energy from freeing the illegal contracts hadn't disrupted the connection between the PC and the printer this time—as a too-stiff breeze was often wont to do. "Anyway, it's time for the two of you to pay the devil his dues. Follow me."

He was well aware that Doumyoji had stuck his tongue out at him behind his back as he'd gone to retrieve the report, and could feel a corresponding glare from Kamo as well, but neither of them said anything until after he'd lead them out of the archive, and then the subject of the conversation changed.

"Hey, hey," Doumyoji said, in English. "Would you take a look at _this_ place!"

Tempted as he was to make a remark about how easily impressed the half-breed was, Saruhiko had to admit he was still getting used to it himself. Munakata's headquarters, kindly donated by the Gold Mages, was four times the size of the house he'd grown up in at least, and certainly less 'hellish'.

In fact, it looked far more celestial than bar HOMRA did, which made it doubly weird that Suoh was the angel, Munakata the other thing. Even his wings had been more typically angelic than Suoh's.

Of course, what human societies thought of as 'typically' one thing or the other was so often wrong Saruhiko felt embarrassed to have associated his own thoughts with them. Munakata was a demon, there was no question of that, and his particular style likely no more than the demonic equivalent of a Heaven fanboy.

That thought made Saruhiko smirk a little, as he guided the two behind him down the stairs to Munakata's office on the first floor of the manse.

But someone was also travelling down that same corridor slightly ahead of him—two of them, and he easily recognised Kusanagi even from behind. Immediately he stopped, arm flung out to prevent the two behind him from overtaking.

_Shit._

What the hell was _he_ doing here!? It had only been just over a week now, not even halfway through the twenty-one day grace period Suoh had agreed upon—and Saruhiko had been finding the work in the archive to be the perfect method of not fucking thinking about what was going to happen when he was inevitably brought before their presence again!

"Huh?" Doumyoji stupidly walked right into Saruhiko's outstretched arm. "Ow. Why'd you stop?"

As soon as Kusanagi's head began to turn Saruhiko used that arm to herd the other two back behind the wall before the Nephilim could get a glimpse of them, and more importantly, him. His nails dug into his palms as he flattened one side against it.

_Calm down_ , he told himself. _You already told yourself what you were going to do when it came to this. So go ahead and do it._

Doumyoji stood on tiptoe to lean over Saruhiko's shoulder and whisper, "What is it? Who are those guys, angels? Are they here to exorcise your boss?"

It was supremely annoying that the newly-freed idiot had realised before Saruhiko had that the person at Kusanagi's side was another angel; tall, gaunt and golden-haired, but then he was nowhere near as powerful as Suoh, so the idiot was still an idiot for thinking he was there to 'exorcise' Munakata.

"Shut up," he said, and waited until the two unexpected visitors had disappeared around the next corner—towards Munakata's office, and where else would they have been going? He hardly thought they'd have dropped round to shoot the breeze with Munakata's motley handful of servants, and if they were here to see Saruhiko then they'd have been compelled to go to Munakata first.

Though he supposed he too now counted among Munakata's motley assortment. Fuck, he hoped they weren't there to see him.

"Angels?" said Kamo, ignoring the command to shut up. "What kind of operation is this demon running, exactly?"

"The kind that gives me a headache," Saruhiko muttered, and checked once more to make sure the angels were out of sight. "Come on."

_Act like they're not there_ , he told himself. _Like you never cared about them in the first place. Because you didn't. And they'd never accept you back, even if you had._

Because who would?

He lead the two behind him out into the corridor repeating this internally, and his back was straighter than he'd usually bother with when he reached the door he could already hear Kusanagi speaking through upon approach. He paused for a moment, and then didn't bother to knock when he opened the door.

Munakata's office was a somehow stylish mishmash of Eastern and Western human cultures. He stood by the window, next to a cabinet that he was running through for some document or other—rather deceitfully, as something like him could have had whatever file he wanted in his hands from across the room with a snap of his fingers.

But then, over the past five days Saruhiko had learned that paying him a wage wasn't the end of Munakata's interpretation of the phrase 'when in Rome'. The demon was committed to enjoying all the mundane regularities of the human world that most humans hated. When Saruhiko had brought him the previous day's report, he'd found the demon peering carefully through a book of current tax regulations and making his neat little notes in a ruled ledger beside it, the freak.

Deliberately avoiding Kusanagi's gaze, as he saw it turn round on him out of the corner of his eye, Saruhiko strode past him and the angel he was with and place his report on Munakata's desk.

"Fushimi-kun—" Kusanagi started.

"Daily report, Captain," Saruhiko cut the Nephilim off as soon as possible. 'Captain' was what the other demon servants; Zenjou, Yayoi and the Minato twins, called Munakata for some reason. "And these two will need sorting out." He jerked his head towards Kamo and Doumyoji.

"Ah, Fushimi-kun," said Munakata, just as he pulled his own file from the cabinet. He handed it to the unknown angel with a casual, "A copy of the agreement Kokujoji-san sent me. I trust that it will be helpful."

The angel cringed like Munakata was covered in toxic waste when he gingerly took the file and stuffed it into a briefcase. Apparently he didn't know how to say 'thank you' either.

Munakata completely ignored this and turned right back to Saruhiko, his eyes swiftly finding the two behind him and narrowing, his head tilting.

"Don't tell me a few illegal contracts slipped through our initial comb-over?" he said: the first Saruhiko had heard him sound genuinely displeased—if mildly so—since the night of his repossession.

Next to Kusanagi, the angel made a vehement gesture and cried, "Illegal!" with a stupid look on his face.

"The holdovers I inherited from the Fox," said Munakata with the utmost smoothness. "You'll note that in the agreement Kokujoji-san has stated with authority from the Prime Minister that I am not to be held accountable for such contracts provided they are dissolved as soon as they are brought to my attention, and within twenty-eight days of the repossession."

He came out from behind his desk and passed Kusanagi and the angel, and Saruhiko must have known instinctively what he was going to do because he too slipped out of the way without even wondering why; just as Munakata drew his sword lightning-quick.

Neither Kamo nor Doumyoji had even the time to flinch; Munakata twirled the sword one way, then the other, and in half a second the ghostly lines that marked a falsely-Damned soul webbed across both the former captives' bodies, cracked, and fell to dust. Only then did they both step back with dumbstruck looks, holding up their hands to look at the patches of darkness that still clung.

Doumyoji brushed at one and watched the little particles fall to the floor. "Hey!" he cried. "We're not bound anymore!"

"Of course," said Munakata, smiling. "I'm only sorry it took this long. How much time has passed, since these two were locked away?"

As he'd spoken, Saruhiko had unthinkingly been glancing around the room and found Kusanagi's attention was still squarely on him and not the other two; peering with eyes through which Saruhiko could easily see the mind's pen drawing out designs for upcoming strategies. He averted his gaze quickly and tried to focus on the question he'd been asked.

"That one," he nodded towards Kamo, "Since January 1945. The other since August 1952."

"Do you know how we missed them?"

Saruhiko clicked his tongue. It was annoying he couldn't actually tell if that was a veiled criticism or not, but he assumed it was.

"They were disguised as artefacts," he said. "My guess is they were trapped by another demon who was later killed by the Fox, since he hasn't done this with any of the others."

"Yes, that does seem likely. Disguising a human soul as an artefact requires a great deal of diligent study, something I'm not sure was Fox-san's strong suit."

"The Host will be hearing of this," said the unknown angel with a hiss, as if that was something Munakata should have been frightened of. Munakata didn't react at all. He just carried on talking to the unlucky pair as though the angel had said nothing.

"We'll have time to find the full truth later, once the two of you have what you need from us. This experience must have been upsetting for you both, would you like to sit down?"

Doumyoji was still brushing dust off his forearms, and continued doing so when he looked to Kamo as if to gage his opinion first. If their stasis had been anything like the others' then they hadn't been conscious trapped in their prison, luckily for them, but Saruhiko wondered if they'd picked up some subconscious sense of camaraderie nonetheless.

Saccharine though it sounded, it wasn't impossible. Kamo took the lead for both of them.

"I think we're fine standing," he said.

"Out of interest," Kusanagi interjected himself into the conversation suddenly, and him Munakata actually turned to look at, "Munakata... san. How many other illegal contracts have you found among your recent inheritance?"

"Six," the demon replied. "From as far back as almost a hundred years ago. They've all been remanded to the care of the Mages for now, though I must say—" he looked back at Kamo and Doumyoji, tilting his head slightly, "I don't think it's the last time we'll cross paths."

The two exchanged another glance. The angel balked.

"What are you planning, _abomination_?" he asked suspiciously.

And his choice of words piqued Saruhiko's curiosity, because coincidence though it might have been, he couldn't help but find it odd that this angel and the Fox had used the exact same word to refer to Munakata.

Who, as it happened, never had the chance to answer the angel's question. Or more likely never had the chance to pointedly not answer it and talk to someone else instead, because there was a knock on the half-opened door and the temperature in the room dropped.

"Captain."

_Oh, great_ , thought Saruhiko.

"Ah, Awashima-kun," said Munakata. "Please come in."

The youkai slipped around the open door and closed it behind herself. In reality she wasn't all that bad, but Saruhiko couldn't help but think of her naked every time she marched into his view—not because he'd found her all that attractive, though he supposed objectively speaking... no, he just found the whole thing really awkward.

It seemed the Yuki-Onna had been bathing when she was captured by the Fox; bereft of a certain protective kimono that was probably also somewhere in the archive, and that accounted for the lack of clothing when she'd first appeared before them. Now she wore a shorter, more feminine sister-jacket to the one Munakata was fond enough of that he dressed all his subordinates in slightly altered versions of—like a uniform, really—over a business-skirt and blouse. With her hair tied up and the dark rings around her eyes all but gone, plus with the new sword swinging by her hip, she looked quite intimidating.

It was the look within those eyes that really brought that out though, and that hadn't changed since their first meeting.

"Captain," she said again, bowing shortly. "Forgive my interruption. I have completed the assignment."

Solemnly, she proffered a convenience store-bought selection of biscuits in a cardboard box.

"Well done," said Munakata. "That one Mage assured me these are the cornerstones of any human office. Fushimi-kun?" he waved his hand over the box, which swiftly opened for him, then held it out to Saruhiko.

"I'm okay," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Cookies!" said Doumyoji brightly. "I'll have one!"

Munakata smiled and presented the selection to him, whereupon he grabbed all four of the chocolate chip ones. Then the demon passed the box towards their guests, and as Kusanagi shrugged and picked a ginger snap, Munakata asked Awashima: "How did you find the human world?"

She deflated a little and looked off to the side. "Things have changed," she said dryly. "But then, in the human world they always do."

That was when, as she turned her eyes back to the demon, her gaze landed on the angels and narrowed. Saruhiko noticed for the first time that behind the sunglasses Kusanagi wore indoors like a freak, the Nephilim's eyes had bugged slightly as he looked back at the Yuki-Onna. She, in turn, went one shade pinker than before.

"My apologies, Captain, I didn't realise we had guests," she said.

"Not at all," said Munakata. "Awashima-kun, this is Kusanagi Izumo; right-hand of our local angel, Suoh Mikoto, and also designated by the Host as liaison between Heaven and the local Exorcists."

Ah, yes—Saruhiko had forgotten about that little side job. That must have been why Kusanagi had shown up this time; the Exorcists wanted some direction from Heaven as to what to do about the sudden demon in their midst, and Heaven was commissioning a review, of sorts.

"I also enjoy ownership of a most excellent bar in the southern quarter," said Kusanagi. "HOMRA. It would be my pleasure to serve you there at any time—first drink on the house."

"Kusanagi!" the angel snapped, and Kusanagi also rolled his eyes.

There was a slight pause before Munakata continued, "and his companion is the angel, Eloaios, the Host's representative to the Golden Mages. They're here because there are some slight concerns about the status of some of my recent acquisitions. Understandable, of course, as Fushimi-kun has only just located two further illegal contracts we missed on our first stock-take. Very careless of me," he bowed his head towards Kamo and Doumyoji. "You have my sincerest apologies."

"Don't mention it," said Doumyoji, through a mouthful of chocolate chip.

The angel Eloaios scowled and folded his arms, green eyes flashing.

"What we are concerned about," he said, "apart from your more arcane motivations in appearing here, is the fact that you seem to have exerted some strange influence over the six illegal contractors formerly held by the demon known as 'the Fox' that were remanded to the Gold Mages, and yet not even the most skilled Sighted Mage can detect what charm you used to mesmerise them!"

"How dare you—" Awashima began, but Munakata quickly held a hand up to still her.

Saruhiko frowned and gave the angel a funny look—he'd been with Munakata from the time that each of those contractors had been released right up until the Mages had come to collect them, taking notes, and at no time had he seen the demon use so much as a casual levitation on any of them.

So he didn't know what this guy was talking about.

"This is news to me," said Munakata. "And of the most alarming sort. Tell me, what alerted your people to the fact that those contractors were under the influence of magic if the Mages could not detect the presence of a spell?"

As soon as the angel showed a split-second of being taken aback, Saruhiko understood where the confusion was coming from. Some people were so stupid that the way their little minds worked brought only confusion to people with actual brains. Case in point, this angel.

"They spent a whole night in your care before the Mages arrived," said the angel. "And when questioned... spoke in unusually glowing terms about you. Suspiciously so, one might say."

With a disdainful snort Saruhiko remarked, "I hope you remember to clear out the droppings that hamster in your head leaves when he's not running on the wheel you call a brain. It's called 'gratitude', idiot."

If there really was a hamster running on a wheel inside the angel's head, then Saruhiko's remark had apparently coincided with that hamster's toilet break, as the angel fumed and moved his mouth, but couldn't quite figure out what to say.

Kusanagi quickly cut in with, "Some of us were also worried about the state of the Damned Soul you took possession of. "There was a message left on bar HOMRA's answer machine that sounded quite... how shall I put this?"

Saruhiko clicked his tongue. He'd known there was little chance the message he'd left the evening he'd woken up would be taken in the way he'd intended it, but he'd hoped at least it would keep Misaki away for the duration of the agreed truce. Because Misaki was an idiot who probably would have tried to find him, 'rescue' him even, before that time was up.

_'Misaki. Since it's you you've probably been calling me non-stop. Your precious Suoh Mikoto burned my PDA up back on the roof, but since Misaki is so easy to figure out, I know you've been calling anyway. Stop wasting your time. Although, wasting time is all we ever did at HOMRA—and if you're wondering why all this happened, that should tell you. Hopefully one day Misaki will see it too. Well, I suppose we'll see each other soon. Bye-bye, Mi-sa-ki.'_

"How to put it?" he asked. "Other than, 'not what Misaki was expecting'? What, did you think King Blue over here had a gun to my head?" He scoffed. "Is it really helpful to indulge Misaki by checking up on me, rather than spending that time trying to drive reality through his thick skull?"

Kusanagi raised an eyebrow—a calm gesture that made Saruhiko flinch a little.

"And what, in your opinion, denotes 'reality', Fushimi-kun?"

"What?" Saruhiko forced himself to laugh. "Were you not paying attention? I'm _Damned._ I never cared about your little delinquents' club or that dumbass angel, and I was planning this right from the beginning!" He folded his arms and nodded towards Munakata. "Well, maybe not on this guy showing up, but who wouldn't want to share in the power of an even stronger demon?"

Before Kusanagi could respond—if he had indeed been going to, rather than just coolly staring at Saruhiko like he was silently weighing up all evidence for his judgement, Eloaios cried out—

"You repulsive snake-child! To glory so in your own Damnation! You'll sing a different tune when you burn, that's for sure!"

And Munakata casually took the opportunity to get back into the discussion—while the contractors watched awkwardly and Awashima remained stoic.

"While he's still on Earth though, I've been preparing a portfolio for Suoh Mikoto's perusal; or rather, knowing Suoh, your perusal, Kusanagi-san—with reference to my research on humans that will detail my plans to maintain adequate energy input and output in the human in question, and any further human acquisitions."

Saruhiko cringed, remembering how the demon had already been putting parts of that into practice, what with the way Saruhiko had been minding his own business web-surfing at one o'clock the previous morning, only to have his work suddenly save itself, close, and his tablet turn itself off without warning and beyond Saruhiko's ability to resume. Then Munakata had poked his head around the door with a grin and a cheerful explanation of, 'Bedtime, Fushimi-kun', before slithering off to whatever it was he was doing.

It was like he thought he had a child, or more likely a _pet_ that he was looking after—and hey, better a pet than a chew-toy, but it was still irritating, and even Kusanagi looked like he'd suddenly been dropped into an alternate reality.

Eloaios was less pensive about the whole thing, he only hissed, "What do you mean, further human acquisitions!?" just in time for there to be a rapid knock on the door.

"Captain!"

Munakata again completely ignored Eloaios and turned to the door. "Zenjou-kun?"

The lesser demon—Munakata's ironically right hand-less right-hand man—came in without further ado, PDA in the other hand and swiftly presented to Munakata.

"It's started," he said gravely.

"What's started?" Kusanagi asked.

There was no answer. Munakata reviewed whatever information was on the screen, and didn't look happy about it.

"Well," he said. "Let's get to work, then."

 

*~*~*

 

_"We talked about this! Back at the bar, you said this would be Yata's decision! The situation has changed, Mikoto! So let him make his decision!"_

_The flames from Mikoto's wings are beginning to put sweat on the foreheads of the gathered humans; all except poor, unconscious Saruhiko, who lies defenceless in the demon's lap. The energy the demon releases doesn't change the temperature of the air as Suoh's does; only the stillness—making it more still than before, all motion sucked away like a vacuum._

_Mikoto's flames bend and twist towards the other demon where their auras meet, swirling into nothing._

_"Yata!"_

_"I..."_

_The gaze of the small redhead turns from Mikoto to Saruhiko and back again._

_And he simply cannot think._

_So, as is his way, he clenches his fists and simply says what's on his mind._

_"Urgh! I don't know what the hell is even happening, how am I supposed to decide what to do about it, for fuck's sake!? Who the fuck are you, anyway—were you responsible for those Gold guys kidnapping Anna!?"_

_Tension breaks. The demon cocks his head, and lowers the amount of power he'd been displaying, and surprisingly for most of those gathered, Mikoto responds in kind._

_"Ah," says the demon. "There seems to be a misunderstanding. While that branch of the Mages were using your friend in an attempt to summon me, I was not aware of it until after their untimely demise. However, once I did realise what was happening, I thought it prudent to take the opportunity to come to Earth in order to allay the Court's concerns about the human organisation known as 'JUNGLE'."_

_Mikoto's entire demeanour changes in an instant, guard dropping so carelessly that now even Totsuka and Izumo, who know him best, are flummoxed._

_"That's why you're here?" the angel asks. Then he laughs. "Oh. So you weren't kidding when you implied you got rid of the Fox to help me. You're looking for an alliance."_

_The demon smirks._

_"Well, if not an alliance, I was hoping we could at least be civil." He turns his ensnaring eyes on Yata. "How about I make you an offer, in regards to Fushimi Saruhiko, and we'll see where you want to go from there."_

_Yata still hasn't the first clue what's happening. But meeting Eric has made him more open-minded about the nature of demons. And Mikoto seems calmer now, and Yata trusts Mikoto's judgement. So he asks him—_

_"Mikoto-san... do you think this person is going to hurt Saruhiko?"_

_And Mikoto snorts. And shakes his head. And looks straight into the eyes of the demon._

_"That's not this guy's way," he says._

_Then pauses._

_"But that doesn't mean I'd trust him."_

_It's strange, and Yata doesn't claim to be an expert on such an awe-inspiring angel's inner mind._

_But he feels like Mikoto sounded a little sad just then._

 

*~*~*

 

The corpse was twisted; literally. Arms, legs, neck and torso; bones ripped out of joints and limbs wrapped around each other like a marionette with its strings tangled. Even its long, black hair had been twirled into ropes and tied around the rest of the upper-body spinning slowly in the air above one of the city's most popular public parks. Saruhiko guessed that it was, or had been, human—or at least a hybrid, since it was rare for the physical forms of other beings to have so much connection to Earth as to remain there when the soul was gone.

"Yikes," said Doumyoji, craning his neck for a better look as a Golden Mage swept past, ushering away a stunned police officer back beyond the temporary glamour-barrier they'd erected. "Someone really hated this guy."

Saruhiko sighed. "Remind me again why we brought these two along?" he asked Munakata.

His demon overlord gave him a look that tried just a little too hard to be innocent.

"Why, Fushimi-kun; until the Mages are able to prepare for them, they are my responsibility. I wasn't going to leave them alone at HQ."

Of course. It seemed Saruhiko would have to guess the real answer for himself. He glanced at Kamo, who was peering closely at the dangling corpse, wondering what could have been going through the mind of a man who for all intents and purposes had one minute been home on shore leave from his active duty in the Pacific, and the next found himself the better part of a century in the future, side-by-side with an American soldier and a King-level demon.

As for Doumyoji, apart from having very good supernatural peception... actually maybe that was why Munakata had brought them.

"You pegged I was Damned as soon as you saw me," he said to the younger of the two contractors. "What can you tell us about this guy?"

Looking surprised and oddly delighted to have been asked his opinion, the youth did a strange run on the spot like he was revving up to go somewhere then stopped with a jump and scrunched his face up at the grisly sight before them. Each of the surrounding persons looked to him with interest.

"Hmm... I'd say he was definitely a half-youkai!" he exclaimed.

"Probably some reprobate getting into trouble with other reprobates," sniffed Eloaios, who along with Kusanagi had also been invited to this scene.

The Nephilim was not so dismissive. "You think this death involved JUNGLE?" he asked Munakata, but the demon didn't answer, only turned his head a fraction towards Doumyoji a fraction before the half-fae looked up brightly.

"And there's a sealing tattoo on the back of his neck—in the shape of a dog," he said.

Munakata raised his eyebrows.

"That's very helpful, Doumyoji-kun," he said, and Doumyoji beamed. "Now, can you tell me what colour the dog is?"

The answer came without pause. "Black."

The demon sighed. "As I'd feared." Then he looked intensely at a specific spot on the corpse. "But those hands are not the hands of a swordsman, so it's not _him_."

"Him?" said Eloaios. "Who were you expecting this to be?"

"The Inu-Youkai," Kusanagi cut in, taking a few steps closer to the corpse, "tattoo a black dog on the bodies of any of their hybrid offspring to seal their transformative powers. I fail to see how JUNGLE—who would defy the authority of Heaven, Hell and Earth but seem to have nothing to do with the Otherworld—would be interested in killing Inu hybrids in general, so you do have a specific target in mind, don't you, Munakata-san?"

"Yatogami Kuroh," said Munakata, slowly, and with a lot of thought behind the name that he didn't expand on. Then he turned to both the angel-affiliates. "I know we agreed to meet with Suoh Mikoto in two weeks time to discuss another matter, but as I am committed to working together on this I would be obliged if he and Kokujoji-san would convene with me at the earliest opportunity to discuss what I know about the situation."

He paused.

"I would also be obliged if I was allowed to take custody of the body after the Mages have scoured the area."

"Out of the question!" snapped Eloaios. "Reprobate or not, this creature had a human soul! He is not to be delivered into the hands of demons!"

_Yes, that seemed very sincere_. Honestly, if this was the kind of angel Kokujoji had to deal with all day Saruhiko wasn't surprised he was turning to the dark side for assistance.

Munakata only shrugged though. "If that is the will of the local authorities," he said, and seemed to drop the matter, though Saruhiko thought he did so far too easily—had Eloaios anything else in his head than that hamster, he should have been far more suspicious about it than he looked. Meanwhile, Munakata looked back towards the park fountain. "Awashima-kun!"

At the sound of her name the Snow Woman bowed briefly to the Mage she'd been talking to and was at Munakata's side in an instant.

"Captain."

"What's the news from our friends about the public reaction?"

Awashima remained stoic as she delivered her report.

"Many ordinary humans saw the corpse as soon as it was levitated—though it seems none of them saw the killer. These days humans have devices capable of sending any image they want to other humans in an instant, where they are then put on some sort of 'net'. I am told news of this is spreading quickly throughout this 'net', and there are already corresponding signs that JUNGLE is involved, so your suspicions were correct."

Hearing Awashima try so hard to hide her bafflement at the term 'net' made Saruhiko click his tongue and offer—

"I can keep an eye on how this progresses online if you'd prefer it, Captain. I think I'm a little more familiar with the 'net' than Awashima-san."

"I'm sure we would both be very grateful, Fushimi-kun. What about you, Kusanagi-san? What are your thoughts on my proposal—and on this matter in general, if I may ask?"

Kusanagi looked startled enough to have been obviously lost in thought, and likely from staring at Awashima's reasonably attractive physique, once he was asked his opinion. Being Kusanagi, he recovered quickly.

"Oh, the meeting? I'm sure we'll be able to drag Mikoto along if the old man can make it. As for this, on the surface it looks like some kind of message or warning—but I get this feeling of disgust for the victim from the killer..." he slowed down here, became more thoughtful. "Only, I can't quite tell if it's because he reminded them too much of their real target... or because he didn't remind them enough." He blinked. "But I'm probably just rambling."

"Not at all," said Munakata. "That was very much along my own lines of thinking. Eloaios-san, might I trouble you to ask Kokujoji-san that I be kept informed of any progress made in his investigation, in lieu of being allowed to retain the body?"

As if everything that came out of Munakata's mouth was a grave insult, the angel's green eyes were replenished with contempt even as he apparently found no reason to object to the request.

"I'll pass the sentiment along to him," he said grudgingly. "But I still don't trust you, Munakata Reisi, and I am very concerned about the collection that has come into your possession. We'll be seeing each other again soon."

"I look forward to it," said Munakata. It didn't even sound like a lie, but Saruhiko snorted anyway because it so obviously was.

Eloaios gave him a disdainful look and turned his nose up.

"Kusanagi!" he barked. "I've seen all I'm willing to for one day. We shall return to the Mihashira tower with all haste."

Kusanagi looked less than thrilled at that pronouncement. He bowed his head to the demon—an act that made Eloaios grit his teeth with sudden anger—saying,

" 'Needs must', as they say. Munakata-san, Awashima-san; pleasure to make your acquaintance. Drop by HOMRA anytime, you'll be most welcome. Fushimi-kun." He smiled. "I'll pass your regards along to Yata-kun."

"Tch."

Like there was any point in that. Well, at least the gruesome floating corpse in the public park had distracted Kusanagi from trying too hard to interact with Saruhiko—he watched the Nephilim hurry after his angelic colleague in the direction of one of the Mages' limos. Said vehicle looked particularly conspicuous among the dozen or so police cars but Saruhiko guessed only the best was rolled out when a member of the Host was involved.

Once they were safely out of even an angel's earshot, he spoke frankly to Munakata.

"Not having access to the body is going to hamper your investigation some, I'm guessing. What are you going to do about it?"

Again with the faux-innocence, the demon blinked.

"My investigation, Fushimi-kun? But I believe I know exactly who did this, although their motive is a little bit opaque at present. Too many possibilities." Abruptly, he changed addressee. "Kamo-san, Fushimi-kun has been kind enough to forward me your file, retrieved from the Gold Mages' own archive."

Kamo, who had been either lost in thought or listening to Doumyoji make useless comments, stared in confusion.

"My... file?"

"It was retained as there was suspicion of supernatural involvement in your disappearance, and as you had made an application to the Mages in their previous incarnation; the Japanese Imperial Magicians Corps. In that application you made reference to having a particular interest in bladed weapons. Could you make a guess as to what kind ended this unfortunate man's life?"

The stare continued, and Saruhiko joined in for a moment, before reminding himself not to be surprised about anything Munakata said, even though he'd been under the impression that the limb-twisting had been the cause of death. Kamo too regained composure surprisingly quickly.

"Uh..." he searched for an answer, and took a deep breath. "The victim is wearing dark clothing, which hides not only the location of the entry wound but also the fact that there even is one, only it's left a trace from a specific kind of demonic blade. Clearly he was killed elsewhere or we would see significant spatter around the area." He cleared his throat. "The killer will be wielding a long katana-type sword, suitable for an Ace-level demon, but forged in such a way that it is only usable by their offspring—so he too will be a hybrid."

He sounded very serious about his observation, and how he intended Munakata to respond to it.

Saruhiko found it a little pathetic how obviously these two looked for praise from Munakata, who should have meant nothing or worse than nothing to them, for their observations, but at the same time he couldn't escape the feeling that their presence was _fated,_ like... like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming into place—it was very strange.

Munakata smiled though, and gave Kamo that praise.

"Well done," he said. "That all but confirms my suspicions. Finding this half-demon will be the tricky part; him and the intended recipient of this message. But we can discuss that later. If you could show our guests back to the car, Awashima-kun, we can discuss the particulars of their situation back at the mansion."

"Sir," said Awashima, inclining her head sharply and then herding the other two away. Munakata remained and looked up at the corpse a demon like him must have committed to memory thrice over at least by now.

Still he looked, and Saruhiko waited with his arms folded behind him, because he had nothing else to do but let himself worry about how Misaki might have reacted to whatever Kusanagi would say when he got back.

Misaki. Who'd have thought they'd not only continue to see each other after 'the end' as Saruhiko had seen it for so long, but actually be working together, as long as their respective overlords were? Saruhiko had his plan for how to deal with the oncoming train-wreck; to twirl his proverbial moustache and say it had been his plan all along, but try as he might he couldn't see Misaki's reaction when he thought about it; his collected mind began to fall apart and he made himself back away from the subject to stay focussed.

This was Saruhiko's life now, he supposed.

Well. At least it wasn't boring.

All the time.

"You're planning on having those illegal contractors work for you, aren't you?" he said to Munakata, to take his mind off the other thing. "Not just the two idiots who just walked away; the other six too. The Host isn't going to like that."

Munakata inclined his head slightly back towards Saruhiko, and the light flashed off the lens of his glasses.

"Irrational and thoroughly deluded as he was, I believe the Fox must have had some kind of instinct for capturing useful people," he said. "Those eight stolen contractors, Awashima—you too even, as you were the only legal contract he didn't put in stasis. And his loss is my gain."

Saruhiko scoffed. "Anyone with basic literacy skills and a grounding in magical theory and practice could do what I've been doing for you this past week. I was only useful to the Fox as long as I was close to Suoh Mikoto."

"Ah, but he bought your soul before you ever met Suoh, didn't he?" Munakata replied.

Then he turned around fully so Saruhiko could see him grin.

"On which note, Fushimi-kun—assuming you don't find it to personal a question, tell me. Have you had any interesting dreams lately?"

 

*~*~*

 

 


	7. The Guardian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news, everyone! I have found somewhere to live!
> 
> (Actually for you guys it's not so good since it means updates might be more sporadic thanks to moving house woes)
> 
> Also, there's another chapter. In this instalment, the meeting between the three major powers opposing JUNGLE begins, with a surprise guest who has a messy history with two of them. But first, Munakata looks at porn, and asks the question all the readers were wondering about...

 

*~*~*

_The second of the dreams that come to Saruhiko following his repossession by Munakata goes like this._

_Spin, spin, spin._

_It takes him a while to realise that the spinning means a wheel, and from the wheel comes a thread, shining, with so many different coloured strands all twisting into one it's like a silken rainbow. That thread pools below him, but the other end is sticking out of the centre of his palm._

_This somehow doesn't bother him so much. Nor does the sight that awaits him when he lifts his head._

_At the spindle, arms a flurry of complex motion, a spider sits. Even dreaming, Saruhiko remembers the last spider Niki had held above his head, the both of them struggling furiously, in vain, as he'd brought it ever closer to Saruhiko's mouth…_

_It hadn't been the spider's fault. And this one in front of him now… again_ somehow _, he doesn't think its presence is malevolent._

_Then there's a flash of lightning. The wheel breaks, and whatever makes him float in this dream collapses._

_He falls._

_He's frightened. He lands on the smooth adhesive ropes of a giant web of spun, iridescent threads, and in the mess he sees the spider writhing in the centre of the web – and Hell beneath them both._

_It's caught in the thread – trapped: someone has done this to them, and though Saruhiko finds it almost impossible to move, he knows he has to get to the centre of the web and free it…_

_And he also knows the only way to free it, is for the spider to eat him._

_But he finds he is still crawling towards the spinning centre._

_Spin, spin, spin._

 

*~*~*

 

Since Munakata had revealed that, during his preparatory observance of Suoh and his gang on Earth, he'd managed to correctly deduce Saruhiko had abilities in divination, Saruhiko figured that he might as well report on his stupid dreams whenever they decided to show up – which, this being the second since they'd exorcised the Fox nine days prior, was shaping up to be a lot more often than when he'd first been Damned.

To Saruhiko this suggested that some other major event was about to come into play, as his previous visions of fire and death had done in the run-up to the whole Fox incident. So, much as he hated 'sharing' with anyone else, it made sense to talk to the demon about it.

The fact that this would be one of his last chances to do so before a whole gaggle of unpredictable humans were moved into the mansion for his demon overlord's amusement, overhearing fuck knew what when you'd have thought they should have been put into some special social care programme, had decided it for him. To his surprise all eight of the illegal contractors had been on board with Munakata's offer to join their happy family.

Maybe it wasn't just that they were all the kind of people Munakata thought 'useful', he wondered to himself. Maybe they were all the kind of people who were looking to be thought _of_ as useful.

_"Wow! That's amazing, Saruhiko!"_

He shook his head.

As he approached Munakata's office he couldn't help but notice some strange sounds coming from within: something like a woman screaming, but not one present in the room, more like from a TV. This did little to encourage him, but he still opened the door without knocking.

"It's just me—"

He stopped immediately.

In the area he normally took green tea, if he was feeling in an 'Eastern' mood, Munakata was sitting back on his calves in the usual fashion, with the usual cup, and an HD flatscreen in front of him on which a busty, naked, bleach-blonde in pigtails was lying on her side, on a bed, with an expression of something Saruhiko guessed was trying to be terror, as an equally naked man with fake horns, red contacts and a lot of black body paint lifted one of her legs up in the air and moved himself into position – so to speak.

" _No!_ " cried the woman, unconvincingly. " _I'm a virgin!_ "

" _You should have thought of that before you sold your soul for bigger tits!_ " laughed the man. " _Now, you are mine_!"

" _Noooooo_!"

Saruhiko was momentarily lost for words. Finally, he managed –

"… I'll come back later, shall I?"

Munakata blinked and seemed to notice him for the first time. "Hm? Oh, Fushimi-kun." He picked up a remote and paused the video just as the heroine was being 'deflowered'. "I wasn't expecting you. Please come in, I think I had the gist of the document anyway."

"… the document?"

Oh, god. The fuck was the crazy asshole on about now?

"Yes," said Munakata, nodding. "As you might imagine, a great deal of research is needed before coming over to another dimension about what is expected of one when one is there, and mine was sadly lacking upon arrival – you understand I hadn't initially expected to take on human servants. But now that I have I've been struggling to find the generally accepted norms for how to treat them. In the literature, instructions for the care of humans seems to be limited to the first eighteen years of human life. And when searching for filmed material on the proper accord between humans and demons, I'm afraid most of it is much as you saw just there, which I'm finding less than illuminating."

He frowned.

"Or should you and I have had sex yet?"

Saruhiko was again, lost for words. The guy was screwing with him. He had to be screwing with him.

Giving him the satisfaction was not an option.

"No," he said bluntly. "Anyway, I came to talk to you about something else. I had another dream last night."

Munakata's eyes widened, which was a comfort because it meant he at least hadn't got Saruhiko's bedroom on CCTV or anything, and he finished what was left in his cup and stood up.

"Indeed? I'm glad you felt comfortable in coming to me about it. Shall we sit down and go over what you saw?"

Not really feeling like sitting down, Saruhiko just clicked his tongue and shifted his weight as Munakata took the chair behind his desk.

"It's not the same as the ones I had before."

_Well, that sounded stupid._

He started again, "I mean, obviously what was in the ones I had before has already happened now. What I mean is it's not… _clear_ like it was then—where it was just, 'oh, an angel's going to burn you to death', and then 'and he's going to do it because you're going to kill his favourite groupie', and 'here's this guy who's going to show up'. I don't know how to explain it, but I can tell it's not…" he trailed off.

"Your dreams have become more allegorical, you're trying to say?"

"I suppose so," Saruhiko said.

The demon smiled at him, and his blue tongue flickered out for a split-second. "Then I'm impressed," he said. "Your powers have improved in such a short amount of time. I'd like to think my influence has had a little effect on you."

"Oh, your influence has affected me, all right," muttered Saruhiko, thinking of all the times in the last week he'd found himself sitting at his desk, typing information into the archive system and suddenly realising that this was his life now, and this was his boss.

He still wondered about that supernatural lunatic asylum theory sometimes. It made almost as much sense as Munakata.

Who, incidentally, ignored his remark but gave him a serious look at the same time.

"You realise that although the visions may seem less clear, this is a sign of progression?" he asked Saruhiko. "After all, despite what you said of the three key events occurring in your dreams, only one actually came to pass – what with you and Totsuka Tatara both still being alive. The more allegorical a dream vision becomes, the further out from your personal future and closer towards the knowledge of great events and figures the implications of the dream become."

Having done little research into the ability for reasons that boiled down to not wanting yet further confirmation of his impending doom, Saruhiko was somewhat embarrassed to admit that he did not, in fact, know this.

"You seem to know a lot about it," he observed.

A strange look came over Munakata's face.

"I happened to be acquainted with one of Hell's most skilled prophets," he said, "although I'm afraid that may be a story for another time. If I might ask, how did this particular dream progress?"

Saruhiko winced, like it was somehow prodding at an open wound to discuss a stupid dream, and it wasn't just because of Niki's thing with the spider years ago, this was something to do with getting the words themselves out.

He couldn't help but appreciate the fact that Munakata only waited while he tried to voice them. Eventually, after what felt like an hour of standing there trying to push through this awful awkwardness, he managed –

"There was… a spider. I was trying to free it but… I knew it was going to kill me if I did. But I kept trying." He sighed with frustration at how hard it was to say this stuff, and for no apparent reason. "I don't know, that was mostly it anyway."

"Hmm."

Munakata leaned forward, fingers interlaced with his chin resting against them.

"And this is the first prophetic dream you've had since your employment commenced?" he asked.

It continued to almost itch at him, like his skin crawled to think about sharing it, but Saruhiko figured that as long as they were having this chat they weren't talking about the whole porn thing, so there was that.

"There was one other. The first night here."

"Is it, perhaps, painful for you to talk about?"

Ugh. That made it sound like it had been a 'traumatic' event or something, and Saruhiko didn't even like the actual trauma in his life to be thought of as such.

"I wouldn't say 'painful'," he muttered.

"But it is more difficult than you feel it should be?"

Saruhiko clicked his tongue. "Are you going to reveal some deep insight into my psyche now?"

To his surprise, Munakata chuckled a little, then gestured towards the seat in front of his desk. Saruhiko still hesitated to sit down.

"On the contrary," said the demon. "I think it might be anything but all in your head, so to speak."

A chord of impending fear pulled tight in Saruhiko's chest when he heard that, and he stood up straighter behind the chair.

"You think some outside force is messing with my perception?"

He'd had enough of that for whatever the number of lifetimes ahead of him might have been. But Munakata shook his head and relieved him somewhat.

"Rather than hiding what will happen by tampering with your 'eyes' so to speak, I believe whoever is behind this – and it makes some sense to suspect JUNGLE – is concealing what's on the other end by making it difficult to discuss; probably not for you specifically, but for anyone trying to peek into their activities. They have that power, both to engineer an event with enough magnitude for someone like you to have a vision of, but also to be concealing that event with an extra-sensory barrier."

He smirked.

"Of course, they cannot compel you to refuse _my_ enquiries, since I own your soul."

Looked like that had been a good idea after all then. 'Every cloud…' as Totsuka would probably say.

But then just as he was about to roll his eyes, Saruhiko realised something. Munakata was right about his not being able to refuse him anything; it wasn't a cut-and-dry state of affairs by any means – he still had free will enough to resist commands temporarily, to subvert his owner by finding loopholes in instructions given or by ignoring indirect statements. But by and large he was compelled to do as he was asked.

And yet, it had been nine days already, and he hadn't once been given a command he'd _wanted_ to resist. Nor been asked a question he hadn't wanted to answer and found himself unable to resist. In fact, this was the first time Munakata had considered actually using the advantage he had over Saruhiko at all, and only because someone else was interfering with his power.

It seemed strange, but Saruhiko was beginning to think even after only this short time that the demon not only had no interest in hurting him, but also had no interest in dominating him in general.

That he simply wasn't that kind of person.

"Please take your time. We have plenty before the meeting starts, and this may indeed be important to the proceedings."

'This' was harder than Saruhiko knew exactly what to do about.

But it was taking his mind off other things.

He took a deep breath, and finally sat down with the demon.

 

*~*~*

 

Izumo had to admit, a part of him had hoped Fushimi wouldn't be there when it came time to have this meeting. The wound was too fresh, and not only for Yata, because as distant as Fushimi had always been from the others, he had still been part of them and been personally responsible for a good few of the human members not being killed by rival warlocks, monsters, and even another demon on one occasion.

As for Yata, the poor boy had been just about on the verge of a nervous breakdown this past week. Izumo hadn't wanted to accompany Eloais to go see Munakata – especially not behind Mikoto's back, which was how things had ended up. Frankly, he had hoped not to accompany that stuck-up incompetent anywhere, but after Fushimi had left that message on the bar answer-phone (and whatever Yata might have said, Izumo had been sure from the beginning that Fushimi hadn't been controlled or coerced into saying those things) he hadn't seen any other way to calm Yata down.

Mikoto, also, had been distant. Neither Izumo nor Totsuka had been able to extract the truth about his relationship with Munakata from him, and it was obvious it bothered him, a lot. But it was also the situation with Fushimi that had been bothering him – the helplessness he had in that situation to do anything but burn the kid's soul clean and kill him.

He didn't let that show either. But Izumo knew him. He could tell what the angel was feeling, and it made him even more intrigued that Mikoto appeared to trust Munakata so much with Fushimi.

Yata had calmed down somewhat since Izumo had brought him confirmation that Fushimi was all right. Confused, angry, and probably terrified, he had taken to scouring through Fushimi's possessions at their apartment for clues to how this had all happened. It had been intense, but focused.

Still, it was no surprise when that focus went out the window the second they walked into Grand Magus Kokujoji's hall and Yata clapped eyes on Fushimi.

"Saruhiko!" he roared.

Izumo sighed. _Here we go._

Fushimi was stood next to the King-demon who owned his soul, looking… well, frankly looking better than Izumo had seen him since he could remember. He was still rail-thin, but either he'd had a few more meals than he'd usually have in a week or the rather pretentious long coat was making him look less skeletal. All of his injuries had completely healed, even erasing that tired, sick look around his eyes, and though Munakata wasn't bothering to cover up the fact that Fushimi was Damned, the blue puzzle-piece lines looked less like a stain on him and more like… a decoration.

Even his posture and expression made him appear less lost than before.

He barely spared Yata a glance though. And yet at the same time, he did move slightly closer to Munakata at the sound of his name, and it was Munakata who answered.

"Ah, Yata Misaki-san," he greeted pleasantly. Yata, who had been racing towards Fushimi, stopped as still as stone when the demon addressed him. "You're looking well. I'm sure you have quite a lot to talk with Fushimi-kun about, but I'm afraid it will have to wait until after the meeting as we have some very important matters to discuss." His eyes wandered to another's. "Suoh."

"Munakata," Mikoto acknowledged, coming to stand beside Yata with a hand on his shoulder.

The two of them had a little staring contest until Izumo shook his head and muttered,

"Honestly. The two of you look like those obnoxious parents who start fighting if their kids are fighting."

Fushimi immediately clicked his tongue in annoyance and folded his arms, muttering something about 'pet handbooks' while Munakata chuckled.

"Certainly not, Kusanagi-san," the demon said. "I would never fight the angel Suoh Mikoto within the Grand Gold Magus' house – that would be very rude."

"Even if I threw the first punch?" Mikoto asked, smirking.

Munakata's own smile became brighter in response, betraying any assertion from the demon that he was above such petty rivalry, even with his reply being, "What is it the humans say, Fushimi-kun? 'A gentleman may not start a fight, but he may finish one'?"

Behind him, Totsuka and Anna had been silent and probably cringing at the obvious tension until the former cut in –

"Isn't that 'ladies', not 'gentlemen'?"

\--as though genuinely trying to be helpful. Which he failed in, horribly, but before Munakata could fire anything back another person stepped forward from the demon's side.

"I should think the same applies either way," said Awashima Seri.

Now, there was someone Izumo had been hoping to see. Outside his bar where she couldn't do any more damage to his professional pride by forcing him to mix ridiculous concoctions. Although, it had been neat how she hadn't needed him to put any of his ice in it, freezing the edges of the glass with a touch.

More than her powers though; or even the nature of her being, which was a sight rarely seen and even more rarely survived to tell about – more even than her ample… beauty, Izumo had found himself intrigued by her.

Beings from the Otherworld like Youkai or Faeries were a funny bunch; they weren't organised like angels but neither did they exist by no particular code as demons did, and with so many – for lack of better term – 'species' of Others, it could be hard to know how to handle any one of them in particular.

In turn it was just as hard for them to handle humans, or either of the other things. Trapped in a box for the better part of two hundred years, Izumo would have thought Awashima would flee back to the mountains at the first opportunity, but as she'd explained to him following her first visit to the bar she'd chosen instead to stay in a world she had very little knowledge of and serve a demon.

Her unashamed honesty in that lack of knowledge, her sincerity and her straight-forwardness truly impressed Izumo enough that he just might have been willing to spoil a few cases of vodka with red bean paste to spend more time with her.

Who'd have thought a Yuki-Onna would have a sweet tooth though?

Fushimi clicked his tongue. "Can we go yet, Captain? I don't really want to hang around these guys."

"What!?" Yata yelled out before Munakata could answer, and Izumo saw Mikoto's hand tighten on the boy's shoulder. "Saru, you bastard, what the hell are you talking about!? You owe me a fucking explanation for this, and you owe Mikoto-san—"

"Enough!"

Izumo took his eyes off Awashima Seri's – was it too early to think of her as just 'Seri'? – and his attention switched from Yata's shouting to the direction the stern command had been exclaimed from, and Grand Magus Kokujoji Daikaku standing tall and unbelievably strong in the entrance to the marble hallway, flanked by two masked mages on either side. Anna cringed closer towards Totsuka.

Both angel and demon straightened their shoulders as soon as they saw the old man; Munakata bowing neatly while Mikoto just put his hands back in his pockets. Kokujoji's eyes moved from one to the other, narrowed like an unimpressed cat's. There was a long pause before he spoke again.

"It was my understanding that we were here to discuss matters other than the inflated egos of the two of _you_."

Mikoto snorted. "Sure, inflated egos. That's what this is all about."

"Whether it is or isn't, his Excellency is correct," said Munakata smoothly. "We do have far more important things to discuss. The JUNGLE organisation on Earth has been bestowing unearned powers on humans who can neither control nor understand them. There is evidence – now almost incontrovertible – that these powers are originating from Hell. The Prince is beginning to become concerned, and this city is the focal point for all of it."

"You're here on your 'prince's orders himself, are you?" Mikoto asked with a smirk.

Munakata smirked back. "Orders, no. But his majesty was more easily persuaded to see reason. The recent murder of the Inu-Youkai hybrid has all the hallmarks of being the work of one half-demon warlock named Mishakuji Yukari, who is known to be the vassal of a demon often considered an enemy by the Prince, and one who has recently disappeared."

"Miwa Ichigen," said Kokujoji.

For a moment Munkata seemed not only taken aback, but even somehow offended that the man had already known as much as he'd been about to reveal, which Izumo found just a little bit amusing. But he recovered quickly.

"Indeed," he said. "And given the nature of the victim of that crime, one easily comes to the conclusion that he has fallen out with the Inu-Youkai hybrid who was once his comrade under Miwa, one Yatogami Kuroh. What the nature of this parting of ways is exactly, I don't know."

Kokujoji held his gaze on Munakata, said "Hmm…" in a gruff tone, and then nodded to one of the 'Rabbits' at his side, who swiftly vanished. With a wave of the old man's hand, the assembled motley crew were subsequently given a small demonstration of the might of one who held the position of most powerful warlock on earth.

A normal person wouldn't even have known what the mage was doing. With no sound or tremor from below the black granite floor metamorphosed, large lumps rising like bubbles from behind each and every one of them before solidifying into chairs – but Izumo could tell he was not only reshaping existing granite in the smoothest fashion Izumo had ever seen someone manipulate a substance as solid as stone, but also – without sufficient pre-existing granite to work with – was transforming the rock beneath so all the material was uniform and stable. Even Yata of all people was speechless,

If that wasn't enough; and with two exceptions all present looked stunned by what they were seeing; the walls and ceiling shrunk to make the room smaller, changed colour, the physical reality of the room temporarily displaced when windows appeared to a location nowhere near them – there were even lines and simple patterns moulded into their surroundings for decoration, no longer an entrance hall, but a stately-looking meeting room.

This was done in less than ten seconds, and Kokujoji didn't even blink.

Neither did the angel or the demon, of course. Munakata sat down as though everything was perfectly normal, brushing the sides of his coat fastidiously as he did so, and following his cue Mikoto slouched himself into the opposite chair. Everyone else was hesitant, though Izumo had to admit after seeing that, and feeling the power it had taken to pull off, he was grateful for the opportunity to sit down.

Kokujoji was helped into his seat by his attendant, and as he sat said:

"I hope the two of you will not take what I'm about to say too badly, but upon agreeing to this meeting I contacted an old friend, and he too will be joining us to discuss matters."

In defiance of their previous antagonism, Mikoto and Munakata actually exchanged a glance that looked somehow like each was confirming that the other would back them up should this move on Kokujoji's part result in anything messy. It was only for a moment, but for Izumo it spoke volumes.

Mikoto had actually been on Earth for several hundred years, although for most of those years his powers had been bound to the level of an ordinary Nephilim's by the Host for some disobedience that Mikoto had rarely mentioned to Izumo, and never in detail. Izumo knew from Exorcist archives most of what had happened during those centuries on Earth, but practically nothing about what had come before it.

He was beginning to understand that what had come before, whatever the form that had taken, had been Munakata Reisi.

"Is that so?" said demon asked lightly. Both his… subordinates, Izumo supposed he'd call them, looked towards him curiously, but he maintained eye contact with Kokujoji. "Well. Although this is something of a surprise, I suppose it is your house, and therefore your decision as to—

"Fucking hell," said Mikoto, standing right back up again as he looked back at the doorway to the inner sanctum Kokujoji had himself appeared from. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

There was no one there as of that moment. But the flames had begun to flicker at Mikoto's back, in preparation for how the wings unfurled, and Izumo felt a sprig of alarm while Munakata blinked and the followed Mikoto's gaze into the empty hallway.

"Suoh?" he asked.

Izumo, worry increasing by the second, fixed his gaze on the same spot Mikoto had and concentrated, but Sight had never been his strongest suit and after a brief moment he turned instead to Anna, who was frowning at the same place Mikoto's glare was beginning to fill with fury towards.

"Mikoto…" she said, uncertainly.

"Sit down, Suoh Mikoto," said Kokujoji. "It is important that my guest be allowed to say his piece."

Unsurprisingly, Mikoto muttered, "Fuck that," and walked past Kokujoji's seat so that he was now the closest one to the entrance. Yata, though clearly confused, sprung up to follow him, and Izumo had to reach out and grab the boy's t-shirt to stop him from bouncing towards whatever danger awaited them.

Anna then also stood up.

"Anna-chan," Totsuka said. "What…"

"An angel," Anna informed them. "He's very powerful."

Anna had that gift that when she pointed things out Izumo at least could usually begin to see them too, and this time was no different. What jumped out at him though, as he felt the buzz of suppressed power heading their way from above, was how unusually familiar this power felt, like it was something that was always there, and Izumo was only now seeing it for its true self.

"Suoh!" snapped Kokujoji. "Control yourself! There are more things at stake here than your ancient, petty grudges."

Mikoto glanced back at the old mage for a split-second, then back again. The temperature in the room began to increase, and not at what Izumo would have called a steady pace.

"You know something about my 'ancient grudges', old man?" Mikoto growled.

That was when Munakata, pushing past his obvious annoyance in not being in control of the situation, stood up with eyes wide behind the elegant glasses.

"Suoh, you can't mean _that person_ is here after so many years—"

There was a light from the ceiling that bloomed into the room and floated down from the floor above; a man-sized liquid bubble of silver-white that splashed back to reveal the being within.

He was tall, pale and smartly-dressed, if in vintage, and his hair was long and the same colour as the light he was giving off. Handsome, but somehow child-like he seemed demure, and almost grimaced when brought face to face with Mikoto, whose molten wings finally unfurled in full.

And Izumo should have recognised this angel immediately. It was telling that he did not, until Mikoto spat out the name,

"Weismann."

\-- which was when Munakata's own crystalline feathers fanned out from their blue lightning spines.

For Izumo, this was too much to take in in a single sitting.

Weismann? As in the Adolf Weismann? The Eternal Guardian Angel whose floating palace traversed the night skies of the entire planet, but never, _ever_ came down to earth to interact with mortals? That Weismann?

And both Mikoto and Munakata seemed to really hate him for some reason?

Fuck.

What were they getting into here?

"Suoh Mikoto and Munakata Reisi," said the being who was apparently the legendary Adolf Weismann.

"You've got to be fucking kidding…" Fushimi muttered, eyes wide and lively for once as he (probably unintentionally) echoed Mikoto. No one replied to him, since Izumo guessed they were all thinking the same thing.

" – It's been a long time," Weismann continued. He had a high-pitched, childish tone and sounded nervous, but not genuinely so, Izumo was sure it was put on for effect. "Heh heh… uh, before you both beat me up too much, I think you should hear what I have to say."

"I don't want to hear anything you have to say," said Mikoto. "I told you what would happen if you ever showed your face to me again; five hundred years hasn't changed that."

Adolf Weismann. _The_ Adolf Weismann, and Mikoto was speaking to him like an unrestrained thug. It was like hearing someone shake down Santa Claus, and yet Izumo trusted Mikoto implicitly and became immediately suspicious of the Guardian at this stage.

Especially since the guilt he saw from Weismann did not look so affected. The silver-haired angel took a deep breath and looked towards Munakata, who seemed vaguely more receptive than Suoh but had a darkness in his eyes in that moment that brought to mind full well the Hell that his demeanour had belied up 'til that point.

"You may want to sit down, Munakata-kun," said Weismann, with a sigh. "Miwa Ichigen is dead. I'm sorry, I know you were friends."

Shock stood out on the demon's face, Weismann's words seeming to hit him physically as he drew back from them. His lips parted, and there was a longer pause than Izumo would have expected before Munakata answered –

"You can confirm this?"

Weismann nodded. "I have an eye-witness account of his death."

"Yatogami Kuroh?"

He nodded again. "I've taken him under my protection. He is safe and willing to answer questions about what happened, and yes – it does have to do with JUNGLE on top of everything. If it is at all convenient, might I suggest we postpone this meeting until I can bring Kuroh-kun here to talk with you?"

"There a reason you didn't bring him now?" asked Mikoto. He seemed by contrast unaffected by the news of this 'Miwa Ichigen's death, but still looked pretty pissed.

"Well, I knew the two of you would be here," said Weismann, and those fake nerves of his just kept getting faker, "and I'll admit I wasn't exactly sure what kind of welcome I'd receive."

One could only call the grin that appeared on Mikoto's face 'demonic', however inappropriate the term.

"So you haven't started losing memory in your old age? Well, I'll get to burning you to ash right now so you won't have to worry about the dog."

His flames brightened, but before Izumo's heart could reach terminal velocity Weismann's stay of immolation came from an unlikely source.

"Mikoto…" said Anna.

Mikoto paused and glanced back at her. Izumo was surprised she wasn't cowering before the power he was unleashing; he certainly felt like doing it, and his fingers trembled somewhat on Yata's shirt, but since Yata was also beginning to back up it didn't matter so much.

They awaited Anna's words.

"… he has something important to say."

Weismann smiled at her, while Mikoto raised his eyebrows.

But it was Munakata whose eyes sharpened as he answered,

"Let me guess. The only reason you'd come down here yourself rather than send Yatogami Kuroh to Kokujoji-san's protection is if your ineffectual nature was overwhelmed by your guilt. And only one person would make you feel guilty enough to push past that."

This was obviously enough for Mikoto to know who he was referring to, as he became almost dumbstruck, and his posture which had tensed in expectance of a fight, slackened.

"Iwafune," he choked, like the name itself turned his stomach.

Even Munakata winced. "Iwafune Tenkei."

Once again, Weismann sighed, having become more and more uncomfortable-looking under Munakata's accusations. "I really am sorry, both of you. But yes, Iwafune is also involved. And before you ask, yes. He's attempting the same thing he always has been."

This was when Munakata actually sat down, shoulders hunched almost defensively, while Mikoto looked to him from Weismann and back again, and over, with concern of all things colouring his shock for the one, and anger being the tint for the other.

Izumo had no idea what this 'same thing' was. It didn't matter, because he could sense an explanation was imminent. What mattered was that he had never, ever seen Mikoto look like this, and it was worrying him – worrying him because of the danger that had to be involved, but more importantly because it was upsetting Mikoto, and Izumo hated that, whatever the reason and however reticent Mikoto had been about sharing it.

It was strange how, when he glimpsed Munakata's party out of the corner of his eye for a moment, he saw his own concern for Mikoto reflected for Munakata not only in Seri's eyes, but also in Fushimi's.

"… which is, for those of us who weren't around to see it over the centuries?" asked Kokujoji pointedly.

Munakata sighed and leant back in his seat.

"Iwafune Tenkei," he said. "Is a disgraced angel. And his one goal in life is to resurrect his Nephilim son, Hisui Nagare."

 

*~*~*

 

_It's a hunter's moon._

_Saruhiko looks up at it and wonders, if he'd come from so far away that he hadn't known a thing about humans, what would be the most important thing to look up if he had to come to Earth on short notice._

_Somehow it's not long before he decides that, however absurd at first glance it had appeared for Munakata to know so little about…_ that _, he actually respects him more for it._

_'That' is not the most important thing to know about humans._

_Not by a long shot._

_It's that no matter how hard humans try to pretend otherwise, there really isn't any meaning in any number of the connections – 'that' included – that humans think they have._

_"Do you people have sex then, down in Hell?"_

_He asks to take his mind away from these boring thoughts, and part of him is afraid of the answer. But mostly he's just curious._

_"Yes," Munakata tells him. "Although it's a little more complicated than it is for humans. Or at least, I thought it was. It seemed to me that sex for a specific, necessary purpose such as procreation would have made things so much more straightforward than the… optional hierarchical reinforcement, as I'd call it. But it seems I was wrong about that, doesn't it?"_

_Saruhiko snorts._

_"Shows what you know," he says._

_Then he frowns._

_"So. How are little demons made then?"_

_Munakata smiles._

 

*~*~*

 

 


	8. The Traitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait, guys - the first part of this chapter was blood squeezed from a stone for some reason. Maybe if I'd stuck to using a word processor like I usually do instead of exsanguinating random stones, then it would have been written faster...
> 
> In this chapter; Kuroh makes an appearance, the delegates at the meeting compete to see who can be the most cryptic, and things get physical between Saruhiko and Misaki, then heat up between him and Munakata. Or is that the other way around?
> 
> Thank you for all kudos and comments. Enjoy!

 

*~*~*

 

Three things jumped out immediately at Saruhiko.

The term 'Disgraced' – as Munakata's 'Prince' himself and all his cronies had been. Angels who lived in Hell, or sometimes elsewhere as this 'Iwafune' seemed to, were hardly to be counted among the Host of Heaven. Ex-angels, some called them, turning their back on their status to avoid Falling, by which an angel was redeemed (supposedly) through death. Physically they didn't seem to be much different to normal angels, but there were rumours, and Saruhiko had always thought there had to be some price paid for this other than mere status. Otherwise, why would any angel choose to fall instead?

Next was 'resurrect' – and that opened up a can of worms. Technically possible for humans, even if they were never exactly the same as before. For Nephilim? That depended on what human characteristics they'd inherited. Which brought him to 'Hisui Nagare'.

He knew the name: that of the rumoured head of the JUNGLE network who had once contacted him personally, and was therefore presumably alive. Except apparently he wasn't, hence the can of worms.

Saruhiko didn't know exactly what was going on from a single sentence. But it only took him a moment to realise something very unnatural was in the works, and it spelled a lot of trouble.

Trouble Munakata and Suoh were apparently familiar with.

That was also bothering him.

"Resurrect?" exclaimed Misaki, eyes darting from Suoh to Munakata and back. "What, like a zombie!?"

"No," said Munakata. "A proper resurrection. Unfortunately not possible for a Nephilim of the type Hisui was, at least not to my knowledge. But he keeps trying."

Kusanagi Izumo paused before speaking, and Saruhiko saw him take in the same way he did the tone of regret that had come into Munakata's voice for those last few words.

"It would explain why he's obtained the services of a Necromancer," he observed. "And really good ones are hard to come by. I take it this 'Yukari' is among them?"

"He is."

Saruhiko glanced back down the corridor Kokujoji had come in from, to where a young, dark-haired hybrid – he could tell as much with a look – was approaching, hand on the sword at his waist but not drawing it. Clear as crystal who this was, Saruhiko was more interested by the power he felt from the young man – stronger than anyone else in the room with human blood except Kokujoji, plus Awashima: that was obvious at once. He continued –

"And I would take issue with the idea that it is 'unfortunate' Hisui Nagare cannot be resurrected."

"Kuroh-kun," said Weismann, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "When I said 'stay out of sight until I call for you…'"

A few long strides had 'Kuroh-kun' at Weismann's side then protectively in front of him, glaring at Suoh.

"I cannot allow another master to face danger in my stead," said the boy. "No matter how powerful they are."

Suoh snorted, either at the hybrid's words, or at Weismann's cringey reaction to them. "So, you're Yatogami Kuroh, huh? You think you can stop me from burning up his majesty over here with that thing on your hip?"

He nodded towards the sword – no ordinary one; Kamo could have told how so better but Saruhiko discerned at least that it too was hybridised somehow.

Yatogami glared harder, hand tightening around the hilt. There was a soft scraping noise as he pulled a few inches of it away from the scabbard slowly, but Munakata interrupted before that could get out of hand.

"Be reasonable," he said, to both of them. "If Iwafune really is behind all this then it's him we should be focussing on." Then he turned to Weismann again. "And I would like to know what happened to Miwa-san, if you please."

Weismann looked slowly to Yatogami.

"Kuroh-kun," he said gently.

The hybrid didn't seem to need such gentleness to Saruhiko, he re-sheathed what little of his sword he'd pulled out and schooled his features to impassivity, though much of his attention remained on Suoh. And though it took him a while to begin to speak, he was brief.

"Ichigen-sama had been concerned for some time about some of what my former brother Yukari had been involving himself in: magic, he was trying to learn."

"Forbidden magic?" asked Kusanagi.

"Not in Hell," Yatogami replied. Kusanagi made a touché gesture, because it had been a stupid question. As if anything was 'forbidden' in Hell. "But here and in Heaven, and even in the Otherworld I would say yes. Forbidden magic. Non-retributive Necromancy, for instance."

Bringing someone back from the dead without altering them in any way, shape or form, in other words. That seemed to point back towards this un-dead Hisui Nagare, but Munakata picked up on something else.

"For instance?" he repeated.

Yatogami met his eyes for a moment before he turned them back to Suoh.

"Cross-dimensional transmogrification," he said.

That created something of a stir. Even Kokujoji, who must have heard it before by now, flinched. Munakata and Suoh exchanged another look that suggested they'd been expecting something of that nature, Kusanagi and Awashima had weirdly similar reactions Saruhiko might have expected to have come from them had they been told Yukari had been involved in child porn.

He wasn't quite so put off by it, because he knew the truth in what he brazenly repeated for the gathering.

"Impossible." He made sure it was known how much contempt he felt for those who thought otherwise. "Physically, realistically, impossible. Humans can't become demons. Angels can't become Youkai. True love's kiss won't turn an ogre into a princess and you may as well just let him get on with it until he kills himself with his own stupidity."

Oh, yes. He knew the truth. No matter what the little voice in the back of his head was saying,

_"Impossible is a word for those without imagination, Saruhiko. Wouldn't it be cool not to be human anymore?"_

That damned lunatic liar. So what if he'd shown Saruhiko a few magic tricks to try and convince him it could be done? So what if he'd done things Saruhiko had found no other record of a human being accomplishing? It was never going to happen.

It had just been That Man trying to scare him. There was no way –

"Mm, unfortunately while to my knowledge it has never been done, there remain certain theories along those lines which have not yet been disproven."

Saruhiko stared wide-eyed at the demon next to him so fast he almost missed the strange way Suoh also turned to look at Munakata when he said those words. But before any elaboration came, Yatogami continued:

"I don't know anything about that. I only know Ichigen-sama felt the line had been crossed when he found out Yukari had given access to Maleboge Parasites to an outsider. Either Iwafune or Hisui Nagare."

Now for just a split-second, he averted his eyes before looking back, and harder than before.

"But Ichigen-sama wanted to give Yukari the chance to turn back and make amends. He left me with instructions to leave on an errand so he could try and appeal to Yukari, where they ambushed him. I wouldn't have let him go alone if I'd known what he was planning. Only, then Yukari tracked me down and tried to obtain my allegiance too. I refused, he attacked, he almost killed me. He believes I have betrayed him by turning him down."

This last part was said with a bitter snort, which Saruhiko found appropriate enough. The star pupil of a king-level demon? It was a position that begged to be filled by a narcissist.

"Maleboge Parasites," said Kusanagi, with a sigh. "So that's how they're doing it. Demonic entities that give quick-fix magic powers to their hosts until they've sucked away as much capacity for self-control as they can. That's why the people playing JUNGLE's game become such delinquents, whether they were before or not."

Saruhiko clicked his tongue rather than point out that the exchange of benefits meant the entities were technically mutualistic symbionts, not parasites. It's not like the name was going away any time soon.

"JUNGLE extracts the parasites before things get too bad," said Weismann. "That way the authorities don't pick up on the erratic behaviour of the subjects, thinking that giving a love-rival acne or stealing video games undetected is just what any teenager would do, if given the power."

"Isn't it?" muttered Saruhiko, thinking of his own dear former classmates.

He hadn't expected Weismann to actually pay attention to such a casual utterance, but the Eternal one clapped eyes on him at once and smiled genially.

"Not necessarily," he said. "All humans have a conscience, the Maleboge Parasites just influence them further towards their darker impulses. Even if they were already committing petty nuisances, there's always space to get worse."

_Maybe for most people_ , Saruhiko thought. He could have named a few who couldn't have been worse, but Munakata cut that line of dialogue off like a knife.

"I'll thank you not to address my servant directly, Weismann," he said coolly.

Weismann flinched.

"Enough," said Kokujoji. "There you have it Suoh, Munakata – are either of you moved to give an opinion?"

At long last, Suoh rolled his eyes and broke off from his poising to attack Weismann. His hands went into his pockets, and he slouched back over to his seat but did not sit down in it. Yata waited for him to pass then trotted behind him like a yippy little puppy. Saruhiko wondered whether it boded more ill for him that the situation at hand muted his disgust with that, or that it didn't manage to push it down completely.

Meanwhile, Suoh tapped Kusanagi on the shoulder and motioned for him to stand up.

"I don't know shit about any of this," he said. "So I guess I'm not going to be any help. You guys decide whatever you want and then come tell me about it, I don't care. I have other things to take care of."

Like catching up on his nap-time, knowing Suoh. Saruhiko almost said so, but Munakata beat him to it.

"I commend you for maintaining your attention for over ten minutes, Suoh. Might I recommend you try for a whole quarter-hour next time?"

"Wait a minute," said Awashima, looking apologetically towards their 'employer' and then back towards the angel's group, confused. "We haven't been told yet how these Maleboge Parasites might be used in cross-dimensional transmogrification. What does Iwafune hope to accomplish by this?"

Kusanagi, Totsuka and Anna had all stood up, but they remained still so long as Awashima had been speaking, and Kusanagi looked to Suoh when she'd stopped as if for permission to stay.

"Iwafune _and_ Hisui Nagare, don't forget," said Munakata, with a sigh. "Although we've never quite been able to determine what method he's used, Iwafune has achieved a partial-resurrection at least. Hisui was a Nephilim closer to an angel than a human, which is very rare. Somehow Iwafune has managed to preserve… something, of the matter of his soul, and this includes his memories and intelligence."

"What is a soul but memories and intelligence?" asked Totsuka.

Kokujoji snorted. "Different for angels and demons than what it is for humans or others. Our souls are easily displaced from our physical bodies because they're separate. Not so for angels and demons. As to your question about the Maleboge, Yuki-Onna-san, you understand those theories your master spoke of are unknown to me, so I couldn't say what he might want them for."

"Not them," said Weismann.

All eyes turned to him once more. He cringed a little under this scrutiny.

"What they collect from their hosts," he continued. "In Hell they don't have access to humans so much, and those they do don't have too much of what they feed on, but I would surmise Iwafune wants the willpower, which is taken from the soul, so he can use human soul-matter to try and encourage Hisui's soul to take on that form. Then, it would only be a matter of finding a human body to put him in, and he'd be more or less alive again."

"Which would be bad?" asked Totsuka.

"Hisui was originally extremely powerful," said Weismann "And it was meddling with yet even more powerful arts that got him and a lot of other people killed some thousands of years ago. As long as he's more or less dead he's also more or less without power, and reliant on his father, but if he was to return to life there's little doubt he'd cause the seven realms nothing but trouble."

All seven, huh? That would have been something. Though since only five of those contained life, and in only four cases was that life intelligent, supposedly, it was really only half as bad as it sounded.

"What arts?" asked Kusanagi.

Weismann only shrugged, so the Nephilim turned to Munakata and repeated, "What arts?"

Saruhiko had to make yet another note of Munakata's reaction there. The way he looked like the slow, deep breath he took was done to stop himself from flinching in pain. All these little twitches and glances led back to the same story, that Saruhiko was sure of, and he wanted to know what that story was now, as Munakata predictably deflected, though with an interesting response.

"I'm afraid Hisui's death happened shortly before I was born," he said. "Your friend Suoh too, if I'm not mistaken. He and I were born around the same time."

Again a reaction that Saruhiko wanted to investigate – this time from Suoh, who snorted almost incredulously and muttered "that's how you put it?", but was cut off quickly by Kokujoji suddenly announcing –

"Suoh Mikoto. As a manifestation of the presence of the Host on Earth you are expected to maintain good relations with the Exorcists, and up to now they have been strained at best. The angel Eloaios has made it quite clear to me that if certain information about your history with Munakata Reisi was made public, relations would break down further, and the Host might be moved to revoke certain privileges that I have no doubt you are quite aware of, given the numerous citations already on your record."

Suoh gave him a smouldering glare.

"You know something about my history with that guy?" he asked, then turned the glare on Weismann, even hotter. "Did you tell him?"

Again, Kokujoji cut him off. "I have only been told that there is history, and that it would upset the Exorcists. That would upset the Host, and even you know you must remain within their good books to some extent if you want to remain on Earth."

"Ch."

The angel rolled his eyes, but as his three Nephilim looked startled by Kokujoji's words, Saruhiko could see him relent.

"On that note, Munakata-san," Kokujoji continued, "I'm sure you will have no trouble with me adding a further caveat to our agreement, mandating the preservation of whatever secrets you and Suoh are keeping."

Munakata glanced at him, expression annoyingly unreadable.

"Even if it becomes relevant to the matter at hand?"

Kokujoji met his eyes. "Is it relevant to the matter at hand?"

"Not at the moment," Munakata said, with a slight head tilt. "It appears Iwafune has found new avenues to take in pursuit of his goal. I don't see him travelling down old, dead ends."

"Very well. Well, Suoh, since I can see you're jumping at the bit to leave I'll have my mages show you out. Another team has already been put on task to research the transmogrification issue, and you and Munakata-san may do likewise. Once we know more, we can begin to plot an effective counter-strategy."

"Mm," said Munakata, apparently forgetting whatever deep dark secrets they'd just been narrowly avoiding talking about. "I think if possible we should aim to capture one of these Maleboge Parasites straight from a JUNGLE host before they have a chance to extract it."

"That's something we can do," said Kusanagi, before bowing in a respectful-looking way. Totsuka and Anna followed suit swiftly. "Unless you believe yourself to be more suited to the task, Munakata-san?"

"Not at all."

They shared and eerily similar fake-looking smile that made Saruhiko click his tongue in contempt. _Honestly._

He was a bit put off that Suoh Mikoto gave a similar reaction to his before drawling, "Point me towards one, tell me what to do, I'll get right on it. He – " he pointed at Weismann, " – comes nowhere near me or mine without my say so. Got it?"

"I will take this opportunity to make a similar request, if you please," said Munakata.

Weismann held his hands up. "If I see any of your people in trouble, I'll intervene. Otherwise I'll stay well away."

" _You'll_ intervene?" exclaimed Suoh. "What, is it the Apocalypse already? Never thought I'd hear you say something like that, ."

"Suoh," said Kokujoji, warningly.

Munakata said nothing, and if anything looked more approving of Suoh's comment than of Kokujoji's quick dismissal. Then he too stood up, and Saruhiko found he didn't even have to think about following.

"Thank you, Kokujoji-san, for allowing us to convene in your territory and discuss this matter. I know you're very busy, and confess I am somewhat embarrassed that much of what I came here to tell you had already been told before." He did not look towards Weismann. "My servants and I shall take our leave of your hospitality."

"Munakata-san," said Kokujoji. "Thank you for your efforts."

Suoh grunted non-committedly and strode out past the others before Munakata could, tossing back over his shoulder, "Lose my number, old man," as he left. Kusanagi made the show of a respectful bow, but it was obvious there was no sincerity in that, and Totsuka waved cheerfully to the others before taking Anna's hand.

Misaki hadn't even looked back as he'd followed Suoh out the door like a moth to a flame. Saruhiko felt his eyes narrow. Hadn't he been yelling at Saruhiko when he'd come in for his grave offences against the holy host of HOMRA? Had he forgotten that already? Admittedly what they'd heard at the meeting had been diverting, and Saruhiko imagined Misaki had questions for Suoh that ran along similar lines to the ones he had for Munakata regarding their past, but was he just going to leave it like that?

Did he not even merit a look back?

_Misaki lives in his own Misaki-world_ , a voice inside his head whispered to him. _You know he does. He doesn't focus on more than one thing at a time, and Suoh grabs his attention more than you._

Stupid Misaki. Stupid, stupid Misaki.

_You won't see if you don't look back. You probably won't see even then, but at least give me the hope you might._

And another voice said,

_Why should he give you a fucking thing? Look at what you've_ done…

"Fushimi-san," said Awashima, snapping him out of his daze with an icy click of her fingers. "We're leaving."

He clicked his tongue. "Yeah, I knew that," he muttered, and unlike Misaki he did look back – one last look at the Eternal Guardian Angel, who was talking quietly enough to Yatogami that Saruhiko couldn't hear him, right up until he turned his head and locked eyes with Saruhiko –

… those eyes…

He'd seen those eyes before.

In his head, the image of a red flower bud being pulled away from its stem with a snap that shook the silver sands beneath him blossomed, and the air in the meeting chamber went still, ghosted with the sound of the wind on the dunes.

With a small gasp, he pulled away quickly from the Guardian's gaze, and stumbled after Munakata, ignoring Awashima's funny look and coming much closer to his owner's side than he ordinarily would have.

Munakata clearly saw this, but didn't spare him much more than a glance until they were in the elevator, which Saruhiko slumped slightly against, heart pounding. Last time something from one of his dreams had come to him in the waking world he'd almost been made to kill Totsuka, and then had a sword shoved through his chest.

Saruhiko had already established for himself that these things scared him, far more than he'd thought they would.

"Fushimi?" Awashima asked him. In defiance of her earlier impatient self she actually sounded concerned. Strange, strange woman. "Are you all right? That angel, he didn't…"

"Rest assured," said Munakata. "Had Adolf Weismann attempted to do anything to interfere with Fushimi-kun, I would have intervened with no doubts left as to the _full force_ of my displeasure." He paused a little longer for Saruhiko to catch his breath. "Was it the first or the second dream?" he asked.

Smart demon.

"The first," Saruhiko told him. "The man in silver, with the red flower. I can't believe I didn't recognise him as soon as he came in, but..."

"It's no matter," Munakata told him. "Indeed, I'm glad it happened as we were leaving and not before, as questions might have been asked. I believe I understand that first dream now, though unfortunately it is both of little assistance and would require me to break the agreement I just made with Kokujoji-san in order to explain."

As his pulse returned to normal the further from Weismann they got, it didn't take Saruhiko long to think through those words, and by the time they reached the ground floor his response was well in hand.

"You said whatever that was would be kept secret unless it became relevant." The elevator doors opened, with an irritating announcement that they were about to do just that. "Don't you think it might be relevant if I'm dreaming about it?"

They exited the car, Munakata leading. "I would be very troubled if it was," he said. "As it concerns a past that brought no small trouble to myself, and to your former leader, Suoh Mikoto."

Whether he would have mentioned him either way or whether he did so because, as they exited the elevator, Suoh and his followers became quite immediately visible, was anyone's guess. The HOMRA 'delegation' had taken the stairs, and were still crowding around the landing on the floor above, which was of open-gallery type configuration.

The reason they had stopped there was instantly apparent, either they'd had the bad luck to run into Eloaios, or he'd just been waiting for them there. Either way, no sooner had Munakata said Suoh's name when Eloaios echoed it with his voice raised enough for the group on the ground to hear it.

"—defy the will of his majesty, the Eternal Guardian, after he deigned to grace one such as you with his presence! Have you no shame!?"

Munakata clearly did not intend for them to watch whatever show was happening upstairs, he spared the confrontation a glance and then moved straight for the door with calm and steady steps. Saruhiko felt the urge to linger though, and could see the same in Awashima.

Whatever Suoh said in reply to Eloaios, they didn't hear. Suoh may have lacked subtlety in most areas, but he had never been one for bombastic yelling. However, Saruhiko could guess the gist of what it was, just knowing Suoh and being able to make out the derisive smirk on his face.

Eloaios countered this with, "You dare!?" which Saruhiko was beginning to wonder might not have been one of about ten phrases that summed up the bulk of word-combinations this angel knew.

Not that Suoh was much better, but at least he had some uses.

" – not only to profane the exalted name of his majesty, but also besmirch the blessed memory of his sister!? His majesty will hear of this, Suoh, mark my words!"

"Don't know what good that will do," Suoh said, now just loud enough for Saruhiko to hear. Munakata had reached the huge revolving doors that lead out of the tower, but he still lingered at their threshold when the demon exited, long enough to hear, "I've already told him more than once; he can't hide from being called out for his fuck-ups behind his sister's corpse. Not from me."

"You loathsome beast – !"

And that was when Misaki, confused as usual as to what was happening, suddenly fixed his wandering eyes on Saruhiko.

_Ah, now he sees me. Now he remembers._

Saruhiko saw that sudden glint, and rise of determination in Misaki's eyes as Eloaios bounced a few more weak insults off of Suoh's thicker skin. As he turned quickly to follow Munakata, that little voice spat at him in his head again.

_What's the matter? Didn't you want him to notice you?_

"Ch," he muttered to himself, and shrugged his shoulders so that his coat would protect him better from the wind as he hurried to catch up with Munakata.

Night had fallen. Weismann's floating palace was nowhere to be seen, and the moon was waning. Yet again the inescapable question – how the fuck did all this end up happening? – began to annoy Saruhiko like some machine that seemed to work fine but sometimes made an awful noise he just couldn't figure out. Because he knew how all this had happened, he'd been there for all of it, and conscious for most, yet the reality of it still seemed so doubtful somehow and Munakata still so hard to understand.

And yet, he must have understood him well enough that he wasn't surprised when Munakata, as though sensing his thoughts, turned his head still walking and smiled at him.

"I do hope the angel Suoh Mikoto does not cause any damage to Kokujoji-san's quarters on account of Eloaios-san."

His words were swiftly followed by a small explosion from the tower behind them, and a burst of red flame flickering from an open window.

"Ah," said Munakata. "How distressing."

He promptly carried on walking the exact same direction as he had before. Saruhiko saw no reason not to do likewise.

"If you could, Awashima-kun, go on ahead and instruct my servants to gather the former contractors. I wish for them to be debriefed on what we have just learned, so that they will be alert. I trust you can handle the debriefing, while I discuss the matter of certain secrets with Fushimi-kun?"

Awashima bowed.

"Captain," she said in acknowledgement. She gave Saruhiko a look somewhat dubious, as if she wondered if he could be trusted with 'certain secrets', but said nothing, and vanished soon after in a gust of icy wind.

Saruhiko didn't think that Munakata was about to start _revealing_ secrets anyway. Yet he wouldn't have said that bothered him. It felt more like their revelation was inevitable, it would only be a question of how long it would take him to deduce them or coax the answers out of Munakata.

In the meantime, he inquired –

"I don't suppose we'll be revealing any secrets to the public, about the danger of JUNGLE?"

"Not if we don't want to risk Iwafune being pushed to do something more drastic. If Weismann is right and he wants to farm human soul-matter, using Maleboge Parasites is only the most under-the-radar way I can think of to go about it. We certainly do not want him to recruit a demon who can make deals such as yours for him, for instance."

Saruhiko frowned. "Angels can't own human souls the way demons can, right?"

"Correct. And a paradox, when you think about it. You and I have already discussed the mountain that runs from order to chaos – " abruptly, Munakata cut himself off, and stopped. "Ah."

"What is it?" Saruhiko stopped next to him.

"It appears someone wishes to speak to you."

Even as Saruhiko turned his head, he heard his name roared out with such rage, such fire, that it left him almost breathless for a moment.

"SARUHIKO!"

They had made it across the street from the Mihashira tower and turned onto the path of a nearby park already when that cry reverberated through the space between them and the few other passers-by stopped dead, and mostly turned quickly from what they saw. The area surrounding the home of the most powerful man on Earth was not known for its peace and tranquillity.

Misaki skated towards him with eyes aflame; raw, unfocused energy peeling off him in his angered state. His t-shirt fluttered out behind him with his speed, and he only didn't come at Saruhiko straight with violence – and Saruhiko knew this, because he knew Misaki – because he happened to catch sight of Munakata, and must have known how bad that would have turned out.

The wheels on his board scraped against the pavement, as they'd done on the roof what felt now like a lifetime ago. Less than a fortnight, it had been. Not long enough for this confrontation, and yet how _hard_ it had been these past two weeks, to use the order of the archive to take his mind off what Misaki might have been doing.

_You wrecked it_ , he told himself. _You poisoned it with evil arts and evil words, just like That Man used to do with everything. You have no business being near someone like Misaki._

…

…

… _but you can't let him forget you either, can you?_

"I'll let you talk with him a while," said Munakata.

Part of Saruhiko wanted to snap back 'no, take me home', instead, but he found the greater part grateful for this offer, as what happened next was something he already knew he didn't want anyone else to see.

Munakata took a few steps further down the path and disappeared, like his form had been only watercolour, washed out of his previous position on the Earth with unseen water. An annoyingly powerful move, to pull off so effortlessly. Saruhiko had no time to wonder why it didn't annoy him then and there.

Misaki had completed his skid to halt, and spent only a second glancing at Munakata's disappearing form before he yelled again;

"Saruhiko! Don't think I'm letting you get away without an explanation this time, now tell me what the fuck is going on!?"

 Ah, but Misaki made it too easy to just screw around with him.

"Was Misaki not paying attention?" he asked. "JUNGLE wants to use Maleboge Parasites to collect enough human soul-matter to turn a disgraced angel's dead Nephilim son into a real boy again. As for the rest – "

"That wasn't what I was talking about and you know it, Saruhiko! Tell me right now – did you really sell your soul!?"

Oh, wow. Was he still stuck on that little hurdle?

Actually, it made Saruhiko angry to hear that. Did he sell his soul? Misaki should have accepted that he had weeks ago. For fuck's sake, why did he have to make things this difficult? Why hadn't he accepted what was so obviously the truth? So infuriating… his anger was bursting out from him in little sprouts of laughter.

"Hey!" Misaki shouted at him. "Don't you dare laugh at me, Saruhiko, not after what you've put everyone through this past – "

"Misaki," Saruhiko cut him off. "Mi-sa-ki."

"Damn it, Saruhiko, I'm warning you – !"

"What are you expecting, Misaki?" Saruhiko asked with enough derision that Misaki stopped, and hurt began to peek through the anger in his eyes, and made Saruhiko hate it and speak viciously to try and cloud it over with anger again. "That I'd say, 'actually the contract is a fake, please get our wonderful King Mikoto-san to find and break the seal'? Do you really think no one would have noticed by now if that had been the case?"

Misaki's fists clenched.

"So you're saying," he growled, sounding dangerous in his fury, "that you really did sell your soul?" he didn't wait for the answer before that slice of desperation showed itself again. "That you sold it to kill your father!? For fuck's sake, Saruhiko – I know he was an asshole, but that's _murder_!"

As usual, Misaki didn't know a fucking thing. It made Saruhiko bite his own lip with anger, but even then he told himself _'better that than tell Misaki just how much of an asshole That Man really was, otherwise…'_

Otherwise…

What even was the otherwise? He knew he'd had good reasons come to mind before, they just wouldn't remind themselves to him now, and it made his anger grow hotter, a twisting feeling inside him that told him not to tell as much out of spite as it did anything else.

"Murder? I suppose it was. But so what, Misaki?" he shrugged, and enjoyed the look of shock on Misaki's face. "You heard what they were all saying just now, about JUNGLE. Do you remember what happened when you and I tried to take on JUNGLE? Do you think the kind of power we'd need to do more than just embarrass ourselves against them comes cheap? Oh – that's right, you want to let the great angel, Suoh Mikoto, do all your fighting for you."

"What the fuck, Saruhiko? Don't start talking shit about Mikoto-san, I won't forgive you! Did you forget that he was the one who _saved_ us from JUNGLE? And what you're talking about makes no sense anyway, how does killing your dad make you more powerful?"

Saruhiko glared. "I told you, Misaki. That guy had access to stuff you could only dream about. Stuff that's all mine now, and that I can finally use now I don't have a fucking angel looking over my shoulder."

Lies, lies, lies. If he'd ever gone near the stuff he couldn't sell without too many questions being asked, it would have only been to burn it along with the bastard who'd gathered it together.

Misaki, meanwhile, looked something close to 'horrified'.

"Hey, you're not talking about forbidden magic, right?"

His answer was a grin that ground Saruhiko's teeth together.

"What!? That's what the villain in a movie uses, Saruhiko, what the fuck are you thinking!? And anyway," his voice abruptly toned down a notch. "Why would you save Totsuka if you didn't want Mikoto-san looking over you? That other demon might have had a chance of beating him if – "

"Maybe, Mi-sa-ki, since I hadn't signed up to be the puppet that that asshole played against Suoh when the time came for him to make his move. What can I say? I took a risk in selling my soul, and it backfired, and I was lucky that Munakata's a freak that happened to have a use for me, but at the end of the day it comes back to the same thing, Misaki. I sold my soul. I sold my soul to kill Niki, and I spent every fucking day in the little angel club _dreaming_ of the day I could leave those pathetic morons for good."

True, true and true, this time.

Half-true, anyway. Accurate, but not the real answer to Misaki's questions.

"I don't believe you," said Misaki.

Of course he didn't.

And suddenly it occurred to Saruhiko to do something drastic to convince him. Because otherwise…

Otherwise…

… there was a reason for that otherwise. He'd remember it again when he could think over the pounding of his own heart.

"I don't believe," Misaki continued, "that receiving the mark of HOMRA on your chest, from someone like Mikoto-san, from an angel that can do the things he does, I don't believe that that meant nothing—"

Saruhiko didn't say anything, he just began to unbutton his shirt, and that made Misaki stop and frown in confusion again. Because he wasn't the stuffy sort of person that buttoned shirts all the way up anyway, Sauhiko only needed to undo one to reach the mark, and two to make sure Misaki saw what he was about to do.

Because even though the reason for that 'otherwise' didn't appear, the solution to this… annoyance seemed suddenly so obvious.

"Saruhiko, what… is that the eye that the demon put on you that Anna was talking about?"

The eye? Saruhiko glanced down and quickly realised Misaki meant the mark left from the sword, slightly across from the HOMRA flame where his blue binding lines spread out from in their odd jigsaw way, visible only to certain people. He supposed it did look like an eye, sideways on and without an iris, but he had no intention of explaining what the shape really meant to Misaki.

"You can call it that, Misaki," he said. "Either way, thanks for reminding me: I should really only be carrying one mark, shouldn't I?"

The first spell that came to mind was one of Niki's favourites; the Touch of Fire, perfect for precision burning, like when you wanted to draw an outline around a child for a later spell and couldn't be bothered to fine a fucking pen.

_"Stay very still, and this won't hurt a bit."_

Oh yes, he'd been very careful there. The only reason Saruhiko had had even the most superficial of burns along the shell of his ear had been because he'd been shaking so much he'd jogged Niki accidentally, and that hadn't even left a scar.

No, it had been the fear that tormented him. Wouldn't it be better anyway, to accept the full force of the burn and not have to fear it in the future? Better he built up something of a resistance to flames now, considering his eventual destiny.

"Wait, what are you – ?"

Saruhiko called on the only technique HOMRA had ever taught, even though he'd never found true affinity with it, released what he was feeling into energy, and from that energy used Niki's art to bring the fire forth into his fingertips.

_Here goes nothing._

He kept his eyes fixed on Misaki as the bright little fires touched his chest. The pain was intense, dizzying; threatening to blur his view of Misaki's anger and confusion changing to stupefaction, like Saruhiko had chosen lightning rather than fire and lashed out at him rather than at himself.

But he knew the angel's brand was not untarnishable, and didn't have to see it disappear when he could watch the disappearance of the will to fight reality in Misaki's eyes instead.

Misaki had always been so proud of that stupid mark.

When it was done the pain felt so bright he almost didn't dismiss the fire-spell itself, feeling it grow and yearn to grow with the agony. His heart raced twice as fast as it had when he'd recognised that stupid angel, and he felt accomplishment.

Accomplishment swiftly followed by a moment of resounding emptiness.

"There you go, Misaki. Or does your tiny brain still not get it?"

_Is that really my voice_ , he wondered, as he heard the words come out.

Misaki flinched like he'd been punched back to reality and without warning he lunged forward; suddenly Saruhiko found himself falling backwards from an impact around his ribs, spinning the sky above him to the ground. The pain from being knocked backwards took far too long to reach him, and he laughed, hysterically so.

"You fucking asshole!" Misaki yelled at him, fists around the lapels of his coat. "How could you do that, you bastard, did everything that happened mean nothing to you!?"

Now, Saruhiko couldn't bring himself to straight out lie to that one.

"No," he said, still laughing, "It meant there was more out there for me than a gang of worthless groupies. Even Misaki will see that one day, if he's lucky."

"Fuck you, Saruhiko!"

Unceremoniously he was dropped back against the path.

"You traitor," Misaki continued, on the verge of tears with rage. "Fuck you."

And then… he was gone.

It was a hunter's moon, waning.

Saruhiko lay there looking up at the sky and laughing.

Stupid Misaki. Stupid, stupid Misaki. He hated Saruhiko now. He hated him. And that was for the best because otherwise…

Otherwise…

"I believe at such occasions it is customary to remark, 'that could have gone better'."

The ridiculous compulsion to laugh dimmed somewhat. A shadow fell over Saruhiko and he turned his head to find Munakata walking slowly towards him from a tree. There was no one else in sight.

"Were you standing there the whole time like a creeper, Captain?"

There were feelings, flying through Saruhiko's head and throughout his body. He didn't know how to categorise any of them, except the pure, physical pain in his chest.

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the term," said Munakata, and Saruhiko guessed that was a lie and snorted. "Shall we go home, Fushimi-kun?"

As the world around him almost instantly faded like the same painted landscape being washed away there was no need to answer, they were back within the confines of the mansion in an instant, with Saruhiko too far gone to even think about what kind of transportation spell the demon had used.

Munakata picked him up as easily as he would a rag doll, and laid him on the covers of what Saruhiko soon realised was his own bed, in his own room that was really not his room, because he'd never go back to his own room again.

Maybe it had all been a dream, he thought, and shook a little with something that was like laughter, but not, until Munakata bent his head over his chest and pulled the cloth of his shirt and jacket aside to –

_Oh, fuck._

Saruhiko stopped dead still immediately and everything swam back into focus, as the dark forked tongue laved gently across the bright red mark trimmed black that he'd just scorched his own skin with; cool and warm at the same time.

His back arched, like it had the night he'd been licked on his neck by that same tongue, and just like that night the pain of it dulled immediately, and the skin tingled. He filled his lungs to their capacity, breathed out fast and sucked air back in again, as the demon's tongue swiped over his skin a second time, now further over than before.

"Does that feel better?" Munakata asked him, almost whispering over his heart. He'd draped his weight on one forearm across the pillow next to Saruhiko's head for better balance, his other hand stroking soothing motions on Saruhiko's opposite shoulder.

A third caress followed before Saruhiko had a chance to reply, and in his state he couldn't think to anyway. His pulse slowed, but he could hear it in his head.

He only knew the answer was yes, and brought his own hands up to the demon's shoulders to pull him closer.

He shut his eyes on the fourth swipe, kept them shut and focused on the sensation.

It felt…

*~*~*

 


	9. The Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys. It's me...
> 
> um... Yeah.
> 
> In this chapter, it falls to HOMRA to advance the plot while Munakata decides instead to bestow a 'small gift' on Fushimi. Naturally, Izumo does his best to cockblock. Hope everyone enjoys, and thanks for the kudos and comments!

 

*~*~*

 

The look on Yata's face as he stormed back to the others outside the tower did not speak for his discussion with Fushimi having gone well. The welled up tears alone testified to that quite adequately.

_Ah, Fushimi_ , Izumo thought. _I don't know what you said, but did you have to be so cruel?_

He glanced over to Mikoto and saw that the return of their wayward lamb had dragged him out of his previous stony brooding, whereupon he exhaled slowly and pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket.

"Yata-kun," Totsuka said softly. "Whatever he said, I'm sure he didn't mean – "

"Shut up!" Yata snapped, fists clenched. "I don't want to hear another word about that guy. He betrayed Mikoto-san and everyone else and whatever happens to him from now on I don't care!"

"Yata – "

"That's enough for now," Izumo broke in.

Much as he had no wish for the relationship between those two to deteriorate beyond what was within their ability to restore, if it hadn't already, they did have more important things to worry about.

Of course, Mikoto was probably going to want to talk about that as much as Yata wanted to talk about Fushimi, so that was going to pose a slight problem. Indeed, no sooner had Izumo turned to him, ready to ask his opinion on Iwafune Tenkei now they were away from the distractions of Munakata and Weismann, but Mikoto had cut him off before he'd even begun.

"What's the situation with the séance?" he asked.

Izumo blinked. Mikoto must have hated the JUNGLE situation very much indeed to have put attention back onto the one with Fushimi. Not that Yata would object since it was Mikoto, but Izumo could still see the disappointment on his face, which Mikoto was pointedly not looking at.

"Séance?" asked Totsuka.

"For Fushimi Niki," Izumo said with a sigh. "There are… discrepancies in the situation which I had hoped to be enlightened on by speaking with the man, but my initial enquiries have hit something of a snag."

"Hn?" Mikoto asked him.

Well. This too was important. Izumo figured he may as well have told them all now.

"Yata-kun mentioned that he'd understood from Fushimi-kun that Fushimi-kun's father was very powerful; something I was dubious of at first since I'd never heard of him, nor have any of my contacts. However, you all know as well as I that just because someone's name hasn't got out to the community, doesn't mean they haven't been heard of."

"You think he was known under a different name?" asked Totsuka.

If only it were that simple. "I haven't discounted it as a possibility. The only problem being none of the well-known unknowns really fit the bill, and as we're talking about someone who's been dead for nearly two years, any semi-legends will have died out and become hard to find. That said, I find it even harder to believe that no one knew about him, because the protection spells we encountered when we tried to contact his soul were brutal."

Mikoto gave him a look he read as 'how brutal?'

"Let me put it this way," Izumo told him. "If I wasn't a Nephilim, I'd be dead."

There had been a trap-barrier the likes of which Izumo had never seen standing between him and his target, and even a cursory inspection of what the barrier's nature might have been had had a vicious lurch of Void matter from the seventh world go right for him, threatening to rip his soul right out of his body. Had he been fully human, it probably would have succeeded, and what's more he'd been able to tell that something on the other side of the veil had been waiting to take his own soul's place.

Stories had been told of warlocks of old able to raise themselves from the dead by stealing the body of the first poor acolyte stupid enough to try to contact them for their knowledge. But he'd never heard of a case in the modern age, and the power that had to go into something like that was truly scary.

Still, with the spell specifically calibrated for an equivalent exchange – human for human – there had been just enough backfire for Izumo to pull himself free with no more than a winding and the knowledge that he'd been overconfident about Yata's tendency to exaggerate just about everything. Fushimi Niki had been more than super-powerful. And he had to have had some kind of interaction with the community in order to have become so; even if it had just been obtaining supplies from them.

Someone would know something.

Mikoto raised his eyebrows. "We know anything about the mother?"

"I have people on that right now; what I do know suggests she's not involved." Indeed, it suggested she wasn't involved in a lot of things. "But let me ask you this, Mikoto – you said you didn't think Munakata would hurt Fushimi, but either way you wouldn't trust him. Do you think he may have played a part behind the scenes in Fushimi's initial Damnation?"

The facial twitch Mikoto made read 'no'.

"And do you think he pulled any strings in regards to Anna's kidnapping and confinement?"

The annoyed sigh that came in response to his words also read 'no'.

"Then what we need to be focusing on is JUNGLE." He ignored the way Mikoto rolled his eyes and leant his head back against the brick wall he was sitting beside. "I've already contacted Dewa with a debriefing of our little meeting and relayed our plan to capture an infested JUNGLE-user. Hopefully we'll have one by the end of the week."

There was a clack-clack as Yata's skateboard hit the pavement.

"Leave it to me," he growled. "I'll get us one by sun-up."

"Yata!" Izumo snapped, hastily so and with far more vehemence than anyone probably would have expected from him; enough so that pretty much everyone but Anna was startled visibly. But this was important. "There's an extremely powerful ex-angel working against us and a half-demon Necromancer who's already killed once out of spite alone, and even betrayed his own former master."

A poor choice of words, perhaps. Yata flinched at the word 'betrayed', and Izumo continued quickly.

"I don't want anyone facing off against JUNGLE forces alone, especially not without knowing their full capabilities. Which brings me to you, Mikoto."

The angel glanced over at him, then released a breath of smoke, saying nothing.

So Izumo elaborated. "We didn't get a chance to discuss it back in there, and that's probably for the best since we didn't manage to leave without wrecking the place anyway," he was so going to enjoy getting that bill when it came… as if Kokujoji couldn't fix the broken windows with a wave of his hand anyway. "But I'm sure the others will have this same talk. Iwafune Tenkei, Mikoto – what are his abilities like?"

Mikoto sighed.

"Full nullification," he said. "Or as full as I've ever seen anyone use it."

Izumo winced. "Against angels, demons - ?"

"Everyone," said Mikoto.

Shit. Ultimate defence was not what a team whose strength laid largely in brute force wanted in an enemy.

"And his offensive capabilities?"

"Not as powerful as mine, or the other guy's – the old man too, probably, but the dead asshole's another story. Being dead, he hasn't got all that much to offer, but the one trick he can play is storing up toxic energies like Void matter or Underworld mist and convert it to raw power for attack. Depending on how long he's been storing he could probably do some damage."

Depending on that he could probably have blown a hole in the Earth's crust. Izumo sincerely hoped he'd had to use whatever he may have been storing against Miwa Ichigen – planet-destroying power of that nature would have taken as long as Hisui had been dead to collect, probably, and if Mikoto had run into this power before it was safe to say he hadn't been storing that long. But that was only the worst of worst-case scenarios, there was plenty more Hisui might have been able to do that ended with them all dead.

However, there was nothing they could do about that for the moment. And Izumo considered he had good enough measure of Yukari's capabilities for now as well.

"Are there any other associates of those two you think we should know about?" he asked.

"Still living?" Mikoto snorted. "Nope. But I don't know if they might have picked anyone else up. It's been five hundred years and all."

"Then that's something we should be looking into as well." Izumo took a deep breath. "Okay, guys. It's been a long day and gathering information when we already know how difficult the JUNGLE network is to hack," much as he hated bringing that up either, knowing the memories Yata would take from it, "is going to take some thought on my part. Either way, I want us all rested before we go out looking for a suitable – "

To Izumo's surprise, it was not Yata who interrupted with whatever protest he had been about to give, but his own phone – the ring tone indicating that it was Fujishima calling. This was something he had not expected; that one and Eric were the only two not reporting on JUNGLE moves or shoring up defences, but focussed on the Fushimi matter instead.

He pulled the phone out, read the caller ID he had expected for himself and frowned, holding his hand up to stall the others before they asked questions or tried to get a way in to suggest something silly, then answered the call.

"Fujishima-kun, I did leave instructions that I was no to be called under any circumstances – "

"Kusanagi-san!"

The cry on the other end of the line was perhaps within the five most desperate he'd ever heard from someone as low-key as Fujishima, and it made him stop and listen.

"Kusanagi-san, the building is under attack by JUNGLE!"

Izumo's heart lurched, and he stood up straighter.

"The bar?"

"No, the tower! The corporate headquarters of Fushimi Kisa's company! Kusanagi-san you have to come quickly, Eric's been hurt!"

 

*~*~*

 

The hour was late, but the demon was not asleep. No surprise there; whatever Munakata's sleep schedule was – if there was one – Saruhiko would not have expected it to be anything like a human's. He stood in front of the window, and showed off his wings when Saruhiko wondered about them, casting glowing shadows on the walls.

They really did look more 'angelic' than Suoh's.

But he'd been over that before. What 'looked' and what was were not the same.

"Those wings and the ones the rest of you guys have… and those of angels, the way they seem to humans is usually more easily differentiated than what you're showing me," Saruhiko said, though he didn't turn around to look at the man he addressed. "I heard that – I heard someone say once that physically they were very much the same though. Is that why you find it a paradox that demons can own human souls and angels can't?"

"I suppose that forms a part of it," said Munakata. "But I thought more that if it was to be that one of us over the other was to have such an ability, in would only have been natural for it to have been angels. To them, such formalisation of a hierarchy would surely be no more than the codifying of order itself?"

Saruhiko thought it over briefly.

"Maybe their orderly nature rejects something like ownership, of something as chaotic as a human," he said.

"Perhaps. And yet there exists a kind of natural order to the relationship between Damned Souls and those who damn them that one would not expect from demon-kind. Which is perhaps why it's not as common as one might think it would be – the state by which obedience of the Damned to the demon is rewarded, and disobedience punished: as you had the misfortune to experience at the hands of the Fox."

Wait. Did that mean… ?

"So that wasn't a conscious effort on his part?" Saruhiko asked, turning his head back towards Munakata for a second.

He remembered the pull and the pain in his neck every time he'd tried to talk back to the Fox in the years he'd been his, sometimes even when the Fox wasn't around, and subconsciously his hand went up to that now clear patch of skin.

"Not necessarily," Munakata told him. "Though he would have been able to cause you pain at will, the nature of your bond might on occasion have caused the same pain without said will, if, by your own reckoning, you were acting contrary to his wishes."

"And the opposite?" Saruhiko asked. He had at length found himself interested enough to turn back over so he could see the demon. "The reward for obedience? I have to say, I don't remember ever feeling that with him –  and I did obey him, for the most part."

Munakata, on the other hand… could that explain why he felt so comfortable with him? Was it the nature of their bond? Was that the reason… well, he'd told himself earlier he was going to ignore that, but.

"I think you didn't obey him as much as you think you did," Munakata told him. "The 'reward' that I have come across in demonic texts about the owning of human souls suggests that it is more a compulsion on my part to bestow 'small gifts', but the writer of that text may have confused a natural compulsion for magical one. Being a realm of chaos, I would not be surprised if it was different from bond to bond."

"So, our contract wasn't the reason…"

Saruhiko trailed off. He knew it was a stupid thing to be embarrassed about, perhaps it made more sense to be reluctant to bring it up because Munakata had been kind of ambiguous about whether or not certain things were on the table between them, and he wouldn't have wanted to give the demon ideas.

Only, _that_ wasn't what was worrying him, when he thought about it. Maybe it was their bond, it almost seemed more palatable to think it was, but when he thought about it he was puzzled to admit he'd find it more distressing to be told Munakata absolutely didn't want _that_ from him, than that he did.

Well, not 'distressing', maybe. 'Disappointing', more like. What he really didn't want, he supposed, was to be laughed at if he admitted that whole healing-tongue thing the demon did had gotten him hard. Even now he could sense the lightest movement might have had him going again, and he hadn't had any kind of release in…

Fuck it. He couldn't even remember.

But Munakata only blinked. "Oh, that? I assumed you'd prefer I not mention it. From my research into human relations, I was concerned you might have found it 'awkward'."

"I find everything about this awkward," Saruhiko told him dryly. "But I suppose it would be good to know whether it was because of the bond or not."

"Probably not," said Munakata. "Rather a side-effect from my healing ability, I have been told about it before, but I thought it would be preferable to pain."

Yeah, no shit it was preferable to pain. There was a lingering soreness in the brand, like a wound that had been healing for several days already, but if anything that was preferable to feeling nothing at all. And there had been a kind of completeness in feeling that pain and that pleasure at the same time that beat out having either on their own.

He shifted with discomfort on the bed. Like the other completeness, it was both annoying and at the same time a relief that Munakata suddenly blinked with understanding.

There was perhaps something rather smug about the smile that appeared on the demon's face; a little something to remind Saruhiko that the man was, after all, a demon. He drew away from the window towards the bed Saruhiko pulled himself into a sitting position on, as his chest demanded he take in more oxygen and the vaguely unsatisfied feeling between his legs became a throb again; lightly in the first few seconds, but when Munakata sat down next to him on the bed it grew.

_Little point in trying not to squirm_ , he told himself. _He already knows_. But he kept as still as he could regardless.

"Was it wrong of me not to see to those needs as well, Fushimi-kun?" he asked. Saruhiko shrank a little from that voice, so close now and so connected to the soothing whispers it had made between licks against his chest he felt himself begin to strain against his briefs. "I would be delighted to have you serve me in that respect as well, if it is agreeable to you."

_To serve me_. Why did a phrase like that send the good kind of shiver down his spine? When had he ever wanted to serve anyone before? He snorted.

"If you wanted that couldn't you have just taken it by now?"

"It could be that to 'take' was not what I wanted."

No, he wouldn't have thought it was really. "It feeds your ego more to have me come to you?" he mused.

"Perhaps."

Either way, Saruhiko didn't really care at that moment. He'd been thinking about this since the day they met, and whatever else it had seemed – bad idea or not – he'd never found the idea disagreeable.

Now the anticipation had built enough that he wanted to push forward, swing his leg over the lap of the demon and see what that tongue felt like against his own.

"Well. As long as you realise that what you were watching earlier was not, in fact, an instructional video, I suppose I'd be willing to 'serve'."

Munakata reached towards him and brushed a lock of hair behind his ear, thumb stroking against his cheek in a strangely platonic gesture. He leant in close, lips brushing the edge of Saruhiko's jaw.

"I shall apply my own instruction, in that case," he said.

The kiss, when it came, was not to Saruhiko's mouth but to his neck; the opposite side to where the Fox's mark had once plagued him. He felt the two points from the fork sear a double-trail of that almost electrical sensation, making him gasp and clutch the demon's shoulders.

_Yes!_ , he thought, his lower body shifting towards Munakata without his having to think about it, though they were too awkwardly positioned yet for there to be contact. _Yes, yes, yes!_

The feeling of relief was not only from the physical sensation. Like the so-obvious and yet so-illusive reason he had driven Misaki away mere hours ago, this was soothing another wound so familiar and yet he couldn't name it.

Maybe that reason and that wound were one and the same. Something he might have pondered, had he not been otherwise occupied.

He soon found himself lain back against the pillow again, in a way he wouldn't have called rushed or gentle. Munakata shifted over so that he was between his legs and slid his lips down Saruhiko's body to attend to the burn once again, causing Saruhiko that pleasure-pain sensation that made him buck his hips straight up against the other man and this time find purchase to cause friction.

It was both a relief and a frustration. To rub himself against another body through their clothes when he could feel the mouth on his chest and imagine how it might have felt on his cock.

And Munakata was as close to a fucking mindreader as a non-telepath could be, because Saruhiko's clothes began to just slip off his body with a splash of basic magic and the demon moved lower and lower down his body until he was at the hem of his underwear, the only piece of clothing Saruhiko was still waring after a mere moment.

It was all moving far too fast to be sensible. He wished it could go even faster. He brought one hand down to try and pull the garment down even quicker and soon the cool air was on his groin.

Munakata didn't hesitate, and in a moment he had his mouth on Saruhiko's cock. Imagination hadn't prepared Saruhiko for that, he cried out, back shooting up from the bed and hands grabbing onto Munakata's dark, silky hair. It took a second for him to have even the smallest thought at the back of his mind that that might have hurt the other, and the thought vanished as soon as it came, because thanks to Munakata's power it was a ridiculous one.

The sensation wasn't as painful as it had been on his burned skin, but it was ten times as intense, and having that initial contact between the other man's lips and the head of his cock drove him to try and thrust more in at once – which Munakata accepted, steadily but quickly, until the whole of it was in his mouth. After that thinking about what was happening became impossible, Saruhiko surrendered fully to the sensation and did whatever his body urged him to.

Still letting his voice release some of what he was feeling in desperate cries he tried to thrust a steady pace into the demon's mouth, the stimulation that felt like a dozen different experiences at once, but the sensation was too much for him to have the focus to maintain a rhythm and the wild bucking began to drive him mad.

Sensing this too, Munakata reacted. He used a spell, a word breathed out against Saruhiko's already over-stimulated skin, a jolt of energy and his hands reaching up to grasp Saruhiko's wrists securely, drag his lower body up and hold his arms down beneath it, the spell paralysing his legs momentarily. The paralysis did not numb them, only made them feel trapped, so Saruhiko could try to buck and thrust as his body demanded yet be held still in place, so his master could take full control.

Munakata moved quickly after that, dark head driving back and forth with perfect timing, the shocking pleasure of the tongue coiling up and down his member combining perfectly with the pain of struggling against the restraining spell and getting nowhere.

All Saruhiko could do was lie there whimpering, and it was amazing.

The orgasm built quickly, when it began to build. Somehow Munakata's tongue was rippling around him as his lips stroke up and down. He felt the throbbing sensation in his testicles he hadn't felt in far too long, and the eagerness with which they demanded release.

Then, with a movement that seemed much slower than it possibly could have been, Munakata looked straight up at him.

He screamed. He came so hard he shattered the restraining spell and the demon quickly tightened his arms around him to hold him steady, but never took those eyes off his even when Saruhiko had to close his own, shaking like a leaf as he came spurt after spurt down the demon's throat.

It was like nothing he'd ever felt before; like every part of him realised how he was owned by this person, like his blood drew back and then came forward in a rush like a tsunami.

And he felt safe. And not alone.

When his orgasm was finally over he collapsed back against the bedspread, breathing like he'd run a marathon and bringing his arms up towards his head to hold himself, in what must have looked weird, but felt right. He was vaguely aware of Munakata's tongue making a final swipe around him before the lips were pulled off his cock with a kiss and the still fully-clothed demon crawled forward above him. He must have swallowed every drop.

There was a smile on his face; smug like before, but also fond, and even a little mischievous, perhaps. Saruhiko felt like he could have slept for another week, but despite that still had some awareness that Munakata hadn't gotten off yet, and indeed the demon reached up for one of his wrists again and brought it down gently between his own legs.

Through the same fabric his own clothes were made of now, Saruhiko felt Munakata's response to what had happened, and stroked his hand over it almost instinctually. It felt oddly pleasurable, to touch the other man's erection and feel it's size even through the cloth.

Munakata closed his eyes slowly at his touch, then opened them again; those deep, powerful marine blue circles like doors to a Hell seen for the first time in a different light. The kind that invited you inside.

Well, he'd said he'd 'serve', hadn't he? He opened his mouth to ask just how his master would like that to occur, and –

_RING RING. RING RING._

What.

_RING RING. RING RING._

Oh, you had to be fucking kidding him…

Only the phone in Munakata's pocket continued to ring, and with a roll of his eyes the moment had passed and he sat back up on his knees to answer it.

"Kusanagi-san." The joy was plain to hear in his voice.

_Typical,_ thought Saruhiko. _Just fucking typical._

He wasn't really surprised that Munakata's face went serious a moment later. All he could do was close his eyes and try to keep the image of his own siren's song-in-visual in his head.

Strange though it was, that after all that he should have associated anything positive with a siren.

 

*~*~*

*~*~*

 

With the authorities already there and as happy as they ever were to see Mikoto and the gang, there was precious little time for them to break through first the outer barrier keeping them from the building – set up by some security company and raised automatically in response to attack, and then the much more sophisticated second barrier that had clearly been put there by JUNGLE's man.

Or men, as Fujishima was explaining hastily on their approach to the spot where poor Eric lay prone and unconscious within, hooded sweatshirt faintly smoking.

 "There were two of them," he said. Mikoto continued walking towards that second, translucent green barrier with purpose as the youth spoke and everyone followed. "A half-demon with a hybrid sword and a warlock; young one, not a hybrid as far as I could tell but the scythe he carried was definitely from Hell."

Yukari and another servant of Iwafune and Hisui, so it seemed. "How young?" Izumo asked him.

"Really young," said Fujishima. "Fourteen at the most, probably younger, scarily powerful. They  used some trick to get through the barrier without breaking it and when we confronted them that warlock did _that_ to Eric."

His uncharacteristically vicious snarl was cut off by Anna suddenly racing forward to grab Mikoto's sleeve.

"It's reflective," she warned him.

Izumo grit his teeth. A barrier that gave back whatever energy was put against would do so for as long as it would make no difference anyway when Mikoto finally overwhelmed it because that much power would reduce the building inside to rubble, and any poor employee working late along with it.

"Against both angels and humans?" he asked the girl.

She shook her head. "Angels and demons."

Good. JUNGLE was betting on Mikoto or Munakata being the one to answer the call, and even though Mikoto had done so, he'd brought his humans with him.

"Yata?" Izumo offered, with a smile.

Yata attacked the barrier with enough violence to have broken through twice over, but then with angels and demons being so ironically similar in pure physical matter, strengthening it against the one had made it weaker to the other, and with so little time the attackers had only erected the one layer.

He and Yata managed to melt a hole big enough for the rest of them to pass through in good time. The drain on Izumo's own energy was quite severe, and Totsuka had to help him through the hole they'd made and let him sink onto the floor to catch his breath on the other side, but Mikoto barrelled on straight ahead.

"Do you see them, Anna?" Yata asked. He, at least, was in the kind of frenzied state that even that last enormous output hadn't been enough to drop him.

He'd crash later, but not until they were done. In the meantime, Anna nodded, and Totsuka knelt carefully by Eric.

"He's breathing," Totsuka told them. "I think it's a sealing spell; didn't work properly because the attacker didn't realise he was half-demon. We might need another demon to break it."

That could be attended to later, as Mikoto aptly demonstrated by saying nothing to it and asking Anna instead;

"Which floor?"

"They're at the top," she said. Then she made a small gasp. "And they're trying to leave. They know we're here."

"Ch," Mikoto uttered, in annoyance.

Izumo saw quickly where this was going. "Mikoto, before you do anything – "

Mikoto's wings shot out to their full capacity and within a second had taken him off the ground and up towards the top of the tower, leaving the rest of them behind. Izumo sighed and forced himself back onto his feet.

"Come on," he muttered. "Totsuka, you and Fujishima watch over Anna and Eric, Yata and I will go after our glorious leader."

"Have a good time!" Totsuka said brightly. He might have been about to say something else, but Anna suddenly said,

"Izumo…"

He turned back from where he'd been headed towards the door, a questioning look on his face.

"They're gone," she told him.

Great. He sighed loudly.

"Then I suppose there's no need to rush. Let's go, Yata."

"What!?" cried the redhead. "How could they be gone, just like that!? Can they teleport like that freaky demon can!?"

Munakata could teleport at will, could he? That was who Izumo assumed Yata meant, and it was a powerful spell to master, even if the concept seemed a basic one. Mikoto for one, couldn't do it – didn't have the focus for it.

It was less than comfortable to think that Iwafune's servants were capable of it. Hopefully they'd only brought along a teleportation device acquired for them by their master, and were not so powerful that they could do so with a thought.

The inside of the building he and Yata came into was a mess—a huge slash right across the wall on their right more likely from the scythe the second attacker had carried than the sword of the Necromancer from the marks Izumo had seen on the Inu-hybrid's body the week before. It had ripped into the circuits in the walls and left some of them still sparking as a gaggle of frightened office-workers huddled nearby behind the soot-covered receptionist's desk. Some seemed to have small burns, but thankfully none looked seriously injured.

Izumo was less thankful for the sight of the doors blown off the lifts – all six that were on that floor in a single row – and the empty shafts beyond down which each car had quite clearly crashed down into the basement. Likely as it was that there was a service lift elsewhere in the building, there was an easier way from there.

"Well," he said, glancing at the wreck while Yata made a noise of frustration beside him. "You know how in this as in all things I long to follow Mikoto's example."

That made the boy brighten up considerably. "You mean… ?" he asked.

"Levitation it is," he announced.

"Yes!" said Yata. "Fucking awesome!" Then he paused and frowned. "Oi, Kusanagi-san; you're not too worn out for that, are you?"

God, what was he – an eighty-year-old man? He glared enough that Yata cringed before he cast the spell, a much easier spell for a Nephilim than a human, considering. Nephilim couldn't fly at will like their fathers, but most mastered the basic technique of creating temporary wings instinctually within their first decade of life.

The wings did not rely on the same physics as winged animals in the human world relied on. A plus in this case, since he wouldn't have had the room to fly up an elevator shaft with the size of the wing needed to carry his weight by those laws. Instead, particles that traversed dimensions naturally and had just fallen down from heaven – there were always some around – gathered at his arms and formed a kind of gravity-defying strand that he could manipulate like wings to lift himself off the ground.

Yata preferred to use devices when it came to levitation, unsurprisingly his skateboard was the choice. He signed a few symbols on the board, backed up with a shot of inner energy and followed Izumo up the shaft, bouncing from the cables to the walls as Izumo swirled around the lines more gracefully.

As gracefully as he could in the confined space, he hit his hand against the edges on a few occasions, giving himself some slight friction burns on their way to the top. When they arrived, they both continued levitating for speed's sake, and followed the trail left by another scythe-slash along the wall, to a room whose door seemed to have been completely evaporated and the strange lights within.

The walls were black, but reflective, and the set of small, bright bulbs in the corner (corners? He couldn't tell at a glance) were mirrored at other points around the room, giving it an eerie quality much like looking into the abyss.

If anything, the fact that a few panels were cracked like spider-webs actually detracted from the creepiness, reminding you that this was not the doorway into Hell. That and the hole Mikoto had blown in the outer wall. Yata still shivered once he'd hopped off his skateboard though.

"Ugh," he muttered.

Izumo concurred. The only thing in the room, apart from a pissed-off looking Mikoto, was the large black box Mikoto was kicking curiously. As Anna had said, the two JUNGLE men were gone.

"Mikoto-san!"

Mikoto paused and glanced over at them, then back at the box. "Better find those guys soon, Izumo," he said, kicking it again – not with any real force or it would have gone through the wall. "Otherwise I'm going to start my own search."

No doubt a very destructive one. Izumo sighed. "What's in the box?" he asked.

It was taller than Yata but not quite Izumo's own height, a perfect cube, and every now and then a little purple light would whiz across a different section of one face. Strangely, he didn't detect an ounce of magic about it.

"Hell if I know," said Mikoto. "Whatever those guys wanted from this place."

"Do you think they got in?"

Mikoto shrugged, but at the same time gestured to the other side of the cube which Izumo walked around to inspect.

Ah. That was interesting.

It had been said once that magic was only technology humans did not sufficiently understand, and while this was not strictly true the more that was understood about one, often the more was understood about the other, so that technology had caught up in many places to the most exact of magics.

This cube, though it had no magic, must have had some kind of barrier inside advanced enough to resemble it, or the two insurgents would have had no problem breaking in to steal whatever of its contents they had come for. As it stood, they seemed to have had more problems than they'd been expecting.

Clearly unable to break into it by force, though a few new-looking scratches marred it on this side, the pair must have tried to encourage the objects within to break out, because a talisman on a chain, a dark bottle – broken, with a red liquid dripping from it into a puddle – and three different books were protruding in various ways from the side of the cube, half phased through the material.

Another very difficult spell.

"They took something with them as I saw them leave through the portal they had," said Mikoto. "Couldn't see what it was; probably just grabbed whatever they could."

Izumo bent down to inspect the items that were in and out of the box. What caught his eye first and foremost was the books, and how while two of them were truly half in, half out, the third was dangling from its back cover alone. Just as he was reaching for it, a text message appeared on his phone.

Seeing it was from Totsuka, he opened it.

_'U won't find Fushimi Kisa inside. She just pulled up to the door w/ a bunch of guys.'_

With a sigh, Izumo showed the message to Mikoto.

"I have a feeling she won't be interested in our help," he said. "Though Kokujoji-san might be able to intercede on our behalf."

Mikoto snorted and reached for the same book Izumo had been about to, then with almost no effort he ripped it away from its back cover and presented it to him.

"Maybe this'll give us a clue."

"And maybe you just destroyed more private property," Izumo reminded him, rolling his eyes.

Those eyes he soon turned to the book, figuring as it was in his hands he might as well. He flipped it to the still-attached front and opened the cover, glancing at the characters inside.

**Fushimi Niki  
****Note 118**  
**December – April**

**If you read this while I'm still alive, Saruhiko, your sneaky little eyes are going to pop right out of their sockets! :D**

He sighed, with the feeling he knew what this cube held within beginning to form in his mind. "I suppose in the interest of our alliance I should phone Munakata-san. If this is what I think it is it belongs to Fushimi-kun, not his mother, and therefore technically it belongs to Munakata."

Idly, he flicked to a random page. On it there was an outline of a body, inked in red, and a column of symbols next to it which on the opposite page were labelled and accompanied with notations in harsh, unfriendly handwriting.

**1.When used on the left side the colour of the subjects eyes is carmine red. The fluid collected was  an adequate substitute for SIP11081. See over under #7 for details. Used on the right the eye-colour remains constant, but a use for the fluid has yet to be determined.**  
**2\. When used on the left side the colour of the subjects eyes is closer to vermillion. Some minor bleeding occurred.**  
 **Well, minor compared to what the snot-nosed thief reading these notes without permission is going to get. You think I don't know you're not my dear Saruhiko? Better close the book before my dulcet words are the last things your eyes ever see**

Izumo shut the book with a snap, heart racing. He hadn't seen any hint of the characters changing as he'd been reading them, but there were subtle spells woven into this book and probably any other that was in the cube: reminding him of just how dangerous the man they'd once belonged to had been.

And as promised, his nose was starting to bleed.

He wiped it furtively while Mikoto's back was turned to gaze out the window at whatever was happening below, and sensing horrible things were to be learned from every word set down in the book he sought to prepare the one who had the most emotional connection to the things he feared, with "Yata-kun – "

But he stopped as soon as he'd turned to look at him.

Yata, having been uncharacteristically quiet for the last few minutes, was staring at the ground near the pool of mysterious red liquid. Izumo soon saw what had caught his attention, probably dropped by the JUNGLE operatives during their escape, but he didn't know why it should have caused such a look of horror to appear on the young man's face.

"A siren's tooth?" he observed, standing closer to him. It was what the little item was, one could tell from the odd concave shape. Even Mikoto turned with sudden interest. "That's a pretty rare item."

"Yeah," said Yata, as his shaking hands clenched. "That's right. It's not something just anyone would have, is it?"

Izumo didn't answer. He had the distinct feeling he didn't have the one Yata really needed.  

 

*~*~*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck it, I haven't written porn in forever. Oh well, hopefully it was okay...


	10. The Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all - I'll be off on holiday to Montana shortly, so there may be a longer wait between updates than usual. Sorry I didn't reply to comments this time, but I'm afraid I'm about to fall asleep. Thank you to everyone.
> 
> In this chapter, JUNGLE. Also, a hot naked man appears, and Yata and Fushimi finally have a conversation about the siren's tooth incident. And I think I can safely say that no one in my audience will be happy about either of those things once they've come to pass.
> 
> Other Note: Age of consent is mentioned in this chapter. Cliff notes version: This is an AU Japan, so I decided to just make it whatever I wanted. So no correcting me.  
> In fact, that excuse applies to everything from here on in, thus preventing me from ever receiving criticism again for as long as I live. Huzzah!

 

*~*~*

 

In the darkest depths of a long, cold night, an angel, a bird and a boy walked into a cemetery.

"Almost like the beginning of a joke," said Iwafune, cheerfully.

Gojou Sukuna groaned and swung his scythe carelessly against the ground, leaving a trail of burnt grass and a hissing noise from the evaporating dew.

"I really hope I never reach the age where I find stuff like this entertaining," he complained. "Why couldn't we have just killed Munakata and taken Fushimi Saruhiko from him? Then he could have given us access to all his father's research and we wouldn't have to worry about Suoh or his—"

"O-ho!" laughed Iwafune. "I'm afraid it's not that easy to talk about killing Munakata Reisi, Sukuna-kun. Especially not when he's in alliance with Suoh Mikoto again, who I don't think would have let it go anyway if anything happened to Munakata, no matter what they like to pretend."

"But it's so unfair!" snapped Sukuna. "We spent all that time negotiating with the Fox to trade some lower-ranked members for Fushimi, only to have Munakata swoop in and snatch him away the day before the deal was supposed to go off! _And_ we even had to add another barrier to HQ to stop him possibly getting our location through prophecy! If it was going to end up like that, why didn't _we_ just repossess the Fox's contracts!?"

Iwafune chuckled some more. "Ah, the impatience of youth, eh Nagare? Imagine thinking of those few months as 'a long time'? Ha ha ha."

The bird on the angel's shoulder twitched, then turned its head to preen a feather for a second. Iwafune continued in reply to their youngest,

"Sukuna-kun, I'm afraid we have no demons in our merry band, only Yukari-kun, who's only half and can't take possession of souls. Those lower-ranking members were only on the table so we could borrow Fushimi Saruhiko for as long as it would take him to claim the inheritance his father left, which Fox-san would then have given to us."

The boy balanced his scythe across his shoulders, pouting.

"I still think Yukari and I could have taken Suoh Mikoto instead of running away. We only got a fraction of the notebooks and they're all cursed."

On Iwafune's shoulder, the bird turned its head around to Sukuna.

"It's a difficult situation," it admitted, voice smooth and pleasant. "Which is why we've resorted to this."

Even as he said it, they stopped, and before them on a white-marble mottled stone was born the name: 'FUSHIMI NIKI', and a set of dates. A long, cold gust of wind whistled past them in the otherwise silent site.

Something of an awkward silence descended.

"You old farts are sure you know what you're doing, right?" asked Sukuna. One who didn't know him well might have said there was some slight discomfort in his voice.

Iwafune grinned. "Ah, you leave this to the old farts, young Sukuna," he said. "From our surveillance of HOMRA, I'm pretty sure we're in the know so far as this guy's likely tricks are concerned. All the same, I think it might be a good idea for you to stand back." He winked. "Wouldn't want Fushimi Niki to steal your body away – who knows what a man like him would get up to with it."

Sukuna made a thoroughly disgusted face and stood well back from the gravestone, perching on a ledger on the opposite side of the path. With a ruffle of the bird's feathers, Hisui Nagare had it flutter over to the tomb next to Sukuna and wait with him.

"Don't worry about the old man's teasing," he said fondly. "The only one in any danger is him, for being the one to recite the invocation, and I doubt Fushimi Niki would ever have guessed an angel would try to summon him from beyond the grave, so he's unlikely to have put any measures put in place."

"Pfft," Sukuna snorted. "I wasn't scared."

As he leant forward on the shaft of his weapon, trying to maintain a bored expression, Iwafune begun the incantation. Sukuna found maintaining that expression got harder and harder with every second that passed though, as the ritual that followed proceeded exactly nothing like any séance Sukuna had seen or heard description of.

Iwafune was, or had been, a Travelling angel, one whose purpose it was to scour the seven realms – well, six of them, at least: he doubted they'd ever sent the old man into the Void – for knowledge and wisdom to report back to the Host. This gave Iwafune special connection with realms other than Heaven, luckily for him as he'd been exiled and all, and in particular to the sixth world, 'Hades': the realm of spirits.

To put it in its simplest terms: he didn't have to open doors to Hades, he _was_ a door, and as he raised his arms Sukuna couldn't help but shrink back from the grey patterns ghosting beneath the exposed skin on the angel's hands and when the wind blew his hair away, his neck. It looked like bruises, like trapped blood swirling beneath the outer layer, bringing Iwafune's physical form into phase with the world what was Fushimi Niki now dwelt in.

Whether it was that or the heavy, inhuman language the angel used to speak the summons that was more unnerving, Sukuna couldn't say.

He supposed both were kind of cool.

The force from the energy Iwafune had had to conjure up to activate the phase blew a strong wind around the stones, even making Nagare shiver inside the bird. Little wisps of pale mist floated off of the angel's skin with the gale, pouring off him in tangled plumes within seconds and stopping over the grave, until it looked like Iwafune was projecting a mirror image from his whole body, a few feet in front of him.

Only, it wasn't a mirror. The ghostly, luminous mass began to take a very different shape.

The man appeared naked – well-built, if on the skinny side – there was a ghost of rib beneath the well-defined muscle, and the pale skin and bags under the eyes generally made the guy look unhealthy, though Sukuna never understood why spirits should have environmentally-produced characteristics that they had in life, but not clothes. The look in his dark eyes made him seem unhealthy in a different way; piercing and predatory, but at the same time just a little distant, like he was a few degrees off from 'sane'.

Of course, mostly what went through Sukuna's head was, ' _don't look at his penis, don't look at his penis, don't look at his penis_!' and he stubbornly kept one eye closed and the other half-covered by one hand, cutting off his own view below the man's waist.

Not for the first time he wished it had been Yukari who they'd dragged out here while he stayed behind to guard Nagare's… physical presence. You'd think being a necromancer would have made him the much more desirable companion, but no.

He had other tasks to perform.

After what seemed an age, the wind stopped, and the image of the man floated eerily silent above his grave, eyes sliding slowly from person to person.

He then wagged their brows suggestively at Sukuna, making him feel like they'd crawled beneath his skin and creating an instant dislike.

"Fushimi Niki-san?" asked Iwafune, lightly.

The man switched focus to him and grinned.

"What's this? Visitors?" he asked. His voice added to the dislike tenfold, mocking and laced with sadistic undertones, higher-pitched than Sukuna would have expected. "Well, you'll have to excuse me, fine sirs. Why, my hair must be an absolute mess!"

Iwafune smiled back, and with him it was always difficult to tell if the gesture was sincere or not, to the point where Sukuna was sceptical sometimes he'd ever seen the one or the other.

"Not at all, Fushimi-san," the angel assured him. "I'd say you were looking quite well, for a dead man."

For a second the man was completely still, and then, slowly, a ridiculously exaggerated expression of faux-shock laced with faux-horror twisted his face.

"What?" he cried. "I'm dead? How the hell did that happen!?"

Nagare cleared his throat. "I believe, Fushimi-san, that you met your untimely demise at the hands of a demon called 'the Fox' in return for your unfortunate son's soul."

Fushimi Niki blinked.

"Oh yeah," he said, casually. "I forgot about that. Poor old Saruhiko, wonder how he's doing…"

"Fushimi-san –"

"… probably being 'done' by his new demon master, come to think of it, ha ha ha."

Sukuna flinched at the thought and almost moved enough for his vision to slip where he really didn't want it to go. This freak found something like that funny? Gross. No wonder his son had killed him – Sukuna would have.

Of course, he wasn't a loser like Fushimi Saruhiko, so he wouldn't have had himself tied to a demon for all eternity in doing it.

"Indeed, as opposed to his 'old' demon master," Nagare cut in. "From whom he was repossessed by one Munakata Reisi. You may have heard the name."

The ghost certainly seemed to have recognised something in what Nagare said. He peered at him for a long time before shaking his head.

"Well, fuck me – a talking bird," he said. "You know, I'm beginning to think there's something strange going on around here."

"It is a strange life, those such as ourselves lead," said Iwafune. "But forgive me, we haven't explained yet why we've summoned you. We know you were among those of us who have the will to look into things others won't. People who lack imagination, and ambition."

This seemed to capture Fushimi Niki's attention, and he folded his arms across his chest as he listened with a thoughtful expression.

Nagare continued for him. "We are no such people, Fushimi-san. And we have reason to believe you hold the final piece in the ultimate puzzle, of cross-dimensional transmogrification."

Fushimi couldn't keep a wide and predatory grin from splitting his face.

"Oh, is that what you've heard?" he asked.

"It is. And we've recently come into the possession of some of your journals, which lend further credence to what we've heard. Difficult thought they were at first to make sense of – Sukuna-kun here is a very talented curse-breaker."

Sukuna felt his own cheeks heat up a little beneath his palm. Nagare went on,

"Unfortunately the aforementioned Munakata Reisi will by now be in possession of the remainder of your journals. He, Kokujoji Daikaku, the Eternal Guardian and another, rather vulgar angel by the name of Suoh Mikoto are working with what seems to be your son's enthusiastic support to prevent us from achieving this monument to the ingenuity of intelligent life. On which note I must ask – Munakata's first act on coming to Earth was to repossess your son's soul from the Fox, and we know Saruhiko was your main experimental subject. Munakata's interest in him seems beneath him unless you'd managed to reach some breakthrough through him."

There was a pause.

"How about it, Fushimi-san?" Iwafune asked. "Is your son really still, entirely human?"

It was hard to say, as hard as with Iwafune's smiles, whether the surprise on Fushimi Niki's face was real or just another one of his mocking expressions made at their expense. Sukuna wasn't always the best at telling these things, and yet something genuine pinged about the way the man twitched before resuming his manic grin.

"How dare you, angel sir," he said. "To imply that I would cast such dangerous spells on my own beloved son? The nerve of such a thing. Especially when he used to sulk so much at all those just-for-fun charms we used to do, why, I would never expose him to such potentially harmful practices. That, my friends, would be the height of bad parenting!"

He paused, but before Iwafune could ask anything else the ghost's smile turned crueller and he added,

"Or would the height of bad parenting be letting your kid accidentally kill himself through dangerous magic and then spending a thousand years lugging a few pieces of him around trying to find the right roll of sticky tape to stick Humpty back together again – killing dozens in the process?" He pretended to mull it over. "Hn, I just can't decide…"

Sukuna turned swiftly to Iwafune but couldn't see the angel's expression as it was facing away from him, while Nagare only had the expression of the bird; head cocked, but who knew what that might have meant?

"It seems you know exactly who we are," said Nagare shortly.

"Oh yeah," said Fushimi, laughing a little. "The tragic tale of the dead Nephilim and his dear, delusional dad. Oscar-worthy stuff, sure, but I prefer stories of true love winning out over all, rather than the whole angst-ridden clusterfucks. I also seem to recall most of those names you mentioned, except for the old Mage, all in conjunction with some of your earlier, failed attempts at transmogrification, so excuse me if I don't give you the help you require when you've already admitted you're working against my son, and all his little friends."

Iwafune was atypically silent, so Nagare filled in –

"The same son who had you murdered?" dryly.

Fushimi clicked his tongue. "Yeah, well, you know what the Buddhists say. If you see your father, kill your father. At least, I think that's something they say, it might have just been something Mom mentioned after my own dear _pater_ raided her whiskey stash one too many times."

He grinned again.

"But hey, no family is perfect. Right, Iwafune-sensei?" Iwafune said nothing. "Ha ha ha. At any rate, don't go expecting a man to turn on his only child, you retards."

With that, the ghost pulled one lower eyelid down, stuck his tongue out and vanished.

Sukuna dropped his hand and blinked to try and figure out what had just happened, and a single gust of wind the blew through the beat of silence dissipated the glowing mist that had been projecting from Iwafune's body, leaving everything as it was before they'd arrived.

Had the guy just… cut them off? Him, a worthless spirit and them, the most powerful people on Earth?

The thought made Sukuna's blood boil. How could he – unless he'd somehow carried power over beyond the grave? And even then, to snub Nagare so – he grit his teeth.

"Well, that went well," said Nagare, making the bird rub its head a little with one wing.

Seemingly all at once devoid of any effect Fushimi Niki's taunts had had on him, Iwafune only chuckled.

"Oh, don't sound so grim, my boy. I wouldn't say we're walking away empty handed."

That sounded like that, then – Fushimi Niki had had at least enough power even dead to dismiss himself from their presence whenever he wanted. Sukuna growled with frustration.

"Why, do you like looking at weird, naked guys so much?" he asked the angel.

Again, Iwafune only laughed.

"Oh, Sukuna-kun. No, what I meant by that is that Fushimi-san seemed to me to be someone who loves to think himself cleverer than everyone in the room. He already pointed us in the direction we need to go, thinking we wouldn't realise it, and now we just need confirmation."

Sukuna frowned. The way he'd seen it the guy had refused them aid unequivocally, but Nagare didn't disagree and that was good enough for him to go along with. On the other hand…

"And you really think whatever this drunkard bum who got killed by his own son managed to figure out is going to be worth the trouble?" he asked.

"One of the more credible theories in the little library I've accumulated over the years," Iwafune said, "holds that a successful transmogrification would have certain side effects that those looking for them would know how to spot. And I have been looking, for quite some time."

"It had been happening for several years," said Nagare, fluttering back to Iwafune's shoulder. "Not too far from where we made base in this city. Of course, even now we can't say for certain it does prove transmogrification was achieved, nor what form it might have taken, nor even by whom, but we are pretty sure Fushimi Niki's experiments have at least something to do with what we found."

"Which was?" Sukuna asked, impatiently.

Iwafune turned and began walking back down the path out of the cemetery. Sukuna followed with a roll of his eyes, waiting for the old man to get to the point.

"Certain shifts in the balance between worlds," he said. "The theory held to the principle of equivalent exchange, so if one type of matter suddenly transformed into another, that type would need something to fill the gap otherwise a portal to the Void might have opened. The idea was that the conjurer would have to contain the portal within spare matter of the second type, and send it back into the void to be destroyed, which would create certain ripples… I'll let you have a look at the text when we get back."

It was hard to be grateful for that when he was pissed off enough that he hadn't been told about this before. Before he could complain, however, Iwafune wondered out loud –

"I do find myself conflicted as to whether or not I think Fushimi Saruhiko was what was transformed by his father's experiments. For one thing it happened more than once, suggesting other objects were used at least at first, but I also can't believe his father had anything remotely like love for him."

"I think he does," said Nagare, drawing a sharp look from the angel while Sukuna tried to stay awake through this boring discussion. "The love a cruel child has for its favourite toy is still love, as I see it. But that doesn't mean they'll shy away from cutting it up and making something new out of it."

Sukuna groaned.

"Can't we just kidnap Fushimi Saruhiko and find out?"

"Munakata has been stuck to him like glue since he took possession of him," said Iwafune, shaking his head. "So we'd have to be prepared to take him out."

Nagare was still the bird. No lips to illustrate his feelings.

But Sukuna thought even so, he might have smiled there.

"About that…" said the bird.

It put a more visible smile on Sukuna's face.

 

*~*~*

 

_"What's Hell like?"_

_Munakata tilts his head._

_"That's something of a philosophical question, Fushimi-kun. There are two definitions of the word, after all. The physical Hell, place of my birth and where I've lived almost my entire life, and the metaphorical, which humans and other creatures can find wherever they are – in the first Hell as much as anywhere, of course."_

_Saruhiko rolls his eyes. "The first one then," he says._

_There's a pause._

_"Hell is… larger, than Earth or Heaven; the planet 'Earth' at least. Difficult to charter, since the landscape shifts and sometimes parts appear or disappear altogether – you can imagine what a place embodying chaos does, I'm sure. Time, space, even gravity doesn't work according to fixed rules. The people there are diverse, as much as they are on Earth I suppose. You might say what all demons have in common is they… don't like being told what to do."_

_"I suppose I sympathise with that."_

_"Most humans would."_

_"Until they really thought about it, for more than five seconds," Saruhiko adds, smirking._

_Munakata smiles back. "Indeed. As for the metaphorical, in Hell there are as many schools of thought on that as anywhere else. My personal favourite, though… if you were interested in hearing it, of course?"_

_"Sure, go ahead."_

_He tries not to sound as interested as he is._

_"My personal favourite holds that 'hell' is when, on the last day of your life, the man you are meets the man you could have been."_

 

*~*~*

 

"The joys of family," Mikoto said in a bored tone, then tossed the cursed book back to Izumo and reached for another cigarette.

Izumo caught it a little reluctantly, having to stain the sleeve of his jacket with yet more blood as another trickle reached his lip thanks to the book. It would stop within the hour with Izumo being what he was, but still, the implications of it all had him still shy of telling Yata, who was glaring out at the lift with something on his mind he was equally shy of speaking on.

Mikoto hadn't yet offered an opinion on Izumo's discovery outside those four words.

It happened though, that Mikoto's words stirred a recent memory in Izumo, and then a thought. As much as he knew Mikoto felt the secrets he was keeping too painful to want to divulge them, and as much as he knew even if he did so it would be contrary to Kokujoji's instruction, and that that would not be without consequence if the old man found out, he hoped this thought was tangential enough to that matter, and proceeded.

"Speaking of family," he said. "I seem to recall that as my dear colleague Eloaios was reprimanding you for all the other people you've disrespected over the years, he also included mention of Weismann's 'sister'."

Mikoto stilled quickly to let Izumo know he was treading dangerous ground. But it was a danger Izumo did not consider all that immediate.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but I'd never heard of a full angel referred to as a female before, nor as a sibling to only one specific other angel before."

Still close enough to hear this, Yata frowned and looked over at them.

"Don't angels have brothers and sisters?" he asked.

"Angels don't reproduce through sexual intercourse," Izumo told him, unable to keep from smiling just a little at Yata's flinch from the word 'sexual'. "Though it's common enough to hear them refer to each other as 'brother', in truth they have neither siblings nor sexual dimorphism."

"Dimo-what?"

"They don't have 'male' and 'female', the way humans and some Otherworld creatures do. Neither do demons. There are reasons every one of them I've ever heard of has appeared male in the human world, so my father told me. Primarily that although angels can… how shall I put this? Eject, uh… substance into a human woman that will serve to create a child, they don't have the ability to create life inside themselves, so by human rules they conform more to the physical function of a male." He turned back to Mikoto. "Was there something different about Weismann's sister?"

Smoke clouded out in front of the angel's face, now blessed with a calmer-looking expression that before so he must have decided this topic wasn’t too close to home for him.

"Not really," he said. "Nothing different about her in body, anyway. Most of us just adopt a form when we come here without thinking about it and it sticks, but we can change what we look like if we wanted to. I don't know if Claudia Weismann chose to appear female or somehow just naturally showed up here like that, but the only reason you hear me call her 'she' now is natural translation. Up in Heaven, there's only one word for 'he' or 'she'."

"Fair enough," said Izumo. "But then why is she only the sister of Adolf Weismann specifically? As I understand it angels are created when soul-matter from dead angels recycles back into Heaven and gets caught in special energy-spots where they form clusters that grow like cocoons," he paused, looking at Mikoto's once-more still reaction. It was this, then, and not the male/female question that was getting to him. "Or so I've heard."

Mikoto glanced away and exhaled. "Sometimes double-clusters form. Down here the result translates roughly to 'twins', and that's what those two were."

Twins? Izumo was overcome with curiosity for the phenomena in itself as much as anything, never mind how Weismann and his sister being twins might have affected Mikoto – this was fascinating!

"Twins," he repeated. "Is their relationship different to that between other angels, then?"

"Yeah, usually," said Mikoto, rubbing the back of his head in annoyance. "But I'm a soldier, not a scholar, so I couldn't explain it to you."

The door to the stairwell at the other end of the corridor outside opened roughly, functionally ending that line of conversation while the three prepared to face what was on the other side – which turned out to be five humans; four tall men in grey suits flanking a woman with long, dark hair, who as far as Izumo was concerned needed no introduction. They headed straight into the room with the cube.

Fushimi Kisa, like her son, was quite pleasing to the eye – and hers were even more contemptuous, and held none of Saruhiko's vulnerability.

And that wasn't all that was missing from them.

"Fushimi-san," Izumo addressed her, bowing.

Beside him, Yata did likewise without taking his own, mistrustful eyes off the stern-looking woman, while Mikoto being Mikoto hardly stirred to look in her direction.

She didn't return any greeting.

"You're trespassing," she told them, shortly. "Remove yourselves or you will be removed presently."

Well. At least they didn't have to think too hard to puzzle out her feelings towards them.

Izumo summoned up his most pleasant smile. "Not yet, I think," he told her. He held the notebook taken from the cube up and waved it a little. "We have a few matters to discuss."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Discuss how you have illegally taken hold of property rightfully belonging to my son?" she asked. "Which I, as the executor of my husband's will was made responsible for."

"So the contents of that cube were, as we'd assumed, Fushimi-kun's inheritance from his father?" Izumo said, confirming it for himself out loud. "I wonder what JUNGLE would want with such a seemingly random thing?"

"Everything the boy deemed too questionable to sell," said Fushimi Kisa. "I'm sure it's none of your business either way."

"Well, as we are working with the Grand Gold Magus himself to prevent catastrophe falling upon this entire city, possibly the world, and those we are fighting against just picked this place as their target I believe it is, in fact, our business."

He paused, trying to find some reaction in the woman – and failing to do so he continued,

"And if this is truly your son's property then really it's up to him, isn't it? Or rather, to the demon who owns his soul and therefore everything he owns. You did know your son had been Damned, didn't you?"

Still no change. Then she clicked her tongue much as her son would have.

"I see your… _group_ is as obstinate as the information I've had suggests," she said. "Very well, I have no intention of wasting resources trying to get you to leave if you'll be gone soon anyway. If anything it will be a boon to the company to no longer be saddled with that thing – it has brought nothing but trouble."

She'd been keeping tabs of some kind on them then, probably more on her kid than them, though that could have been for any reason and Izumo frankly doubted it was because of deeply-hidden affection.

If what he'd deduced from the few lines he'd managed to read from the notebook in anyway conformed to reality, she was more than just a 'distant' mother. Less, rather. No, if she'd had even the slightest regard, however buried, she never would have left her child with a man who used him as an experiment for his magic.

There were people who volunteered for such experiments and… other ways of getting ones hands on a subject in the community if one had few scruples, and Fushimi Niki seemed to have been such a man. But what he hadn't been was known to the community, so the 'subject' mentioned in his notebooks was almost certainly his son.

Things he'd already had an inkling about had become clearer. Not that Izumo could say it brought him much satisfaction to have worked it out.

Yata, meanwhile, still had none.

"Is that really all you have to say," the boy snarled quietly, with clenched fists barely keeping his aura from exploding out. "About your son being Damned? What kind of mother are you!?"

That was when Izumo detected, just for a split second, the slightest twitch in the corner of the woman's mouth resembling a smirk.

"Saruhiko has made it clear in no uncertain terms he has no interest in being my son, and accordingly I have none in being his mother. I don't recall asking for your thoughts on the matter."

Yata flinched forward, furiously.

"You goddamn son of a – "

"Fushimi-san," a voice called from across the ruined chamber. "The… uh.. gentleman, has arrived – with an entourage. We've confirmed your son is with him."

Fushimi Kisa turned her head and nodded in acknowledgement.

"Excellent. The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can get rid of the lot of you."

Another angry sound escaped from Yata, and Izumo found it hard to hold his hand up to stay him from doing something stupid: Fushimi Kisa's guards were armed, and with the latest in disruptive energy weapons which were frightfully efficient at cutting through most mid-to-low-grade magic tricks like paper, but he was beginning to really dislike her and the guns would have been nothing to Mikoto.

Then with a clatter of cables in the broken elevator shaft a shadow came flying up from below and soon its caster followed, with five more behind him.

It had only been a few hours since Izumo had seen Munakata Reisi and Fushimi Saruhiko. Here they appeared again, with four of Munakata's other servants following – including the two illegal contractors Izumo had met before, but unfortunately not including Seri – and yet something seemed to have changed about the both of them.

It was more than Fushimi looking rather more worn-out than he had before. Messy, like he'd dressed in a hurry. There was a flush in his cheeks that made Izumo wonder if he'd made himself sick again, and Munakata looked like he was struggling to keep some form of irritation suppressed when he glided up onto the corridor and towards them.

Fushimi trailed far closer to him than he had been before, and Izumo suddenly found Mikoto next to him, with a strange, dumbstruck expression on his face he quickly hid via face-palm.

What on earth…

"Suoh Mikoto," Munakata called out, more faux in his faux-cheerfulness than usual. "Our reunion comes a little earlier than I'd expected."

"Yeah," said Mikoto. "I can see that."

Munakata only blinked innocently, but Fushimi flinched and everyone else began looking at each other in confusion.

Izumo didn't yet understand what was going on there, brain rather preoccupied with other things, but one thing that occurred to him was that it was just as likely Fushimi had flinched upon the sight of his mother, who in turn regarded him with as much interest as one would have seeing a fly buzzing into the room. Very slight annoyance, at most.

Yata, by contrast, turned away, as the sight of the person he'd just been so angry on behalf of reminded him how angry he still was with, and whatever was going on with that siren's tooth he'd picked up and pocketed added to those confused feelings.

Fushimi Kisa brushed a strand of long hair behind her shoulder and turned to Munakata.

"Munakata Reisi-san?" she asked.

His expression was schooled to blankness. "Fushimi Kisa-san," he returned.

"Am I to assume you have come to collect the inheritance my late husband left to his son?"

"I have."

The woman turned to the associate next to her. "The key," she ordered him.

He nodded and proffered the briefcase he'd been holding towards her, opening it to reveal what looked like an ordinary PDA, which she took and held before Munakata.

"If I could ask you," she said, "to prove you are indeed the legal proxy for the inheritor in these circumstances?"

Munakata casually put one hand on Fushimi's shoulder, making his squirm a little as the blue lines of his possession suddenly shone, visible to everyone in the room.

"Very well," said Kisa. "Then this belongs to you. Please leave my property as soon as you are done collecting it; I don't make a habit of consorting with demons and I'd prefer to have the builders in as soon as possible to survey the damage."

"Thank you," said Munakata. "I don't suppose there is an inventory of items, so that we may check what may have been stolen?"

Already turned away, Fushimi Kisa threw back over her shoulder, "all the relevant information is on the device," and returned to the staircase her guards must have carried her up for her to have arrived in the immaculate state she had.

So, with only a few company personnel left behind, presumably to phone for help if the rest started wrecking the place, Izumo, Mikoto and Yata were left with Munakata, Fushimi and the four servants they'd brought. Isumo remembered the two on the left were named Doumyoji and Kamo; the other two he'd never seen before – both good looking young men in blue coats like their companions. Curiously, both they and the other two were also equipped with swords at their hip.

Surprisingly, the first to speak was Mikoto.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?" he asked Munakata, uncomfortably.

Before the demon could do more than give him a questioning look he'd grabbed him by the arm and begun dragging him off  towards the empty corridor and around the corner while the rest looked on in shock – barely giving him enough time to hand the PDA-key off to Fushimi.

An awkward silence ensued, as the remaining seven stared after their respective leaders' abrupt exit.

"Well," said Izumo, eventually. "I'm sure that was nothing for any of us to worry about."

Still no one said anything, so he added –

"That said, I'd better go after them to make sure they don't kill each other. Play nice, boys."

He gave Yata an especially pointed look before dashing off after the angel and demon, wondering if that afterthought had really been enough when things between him and Fushimi were so volatile, and he had no idea of the capabilities of the other four to stop them were.

Still, it was less likely they'd bring down the whole building than Mikoto and the demon being alone together might have. Not that Izumo would have been nearly as effective at stopping them from coming to blows if force had been necessary, but he liked to think he held at least some command of reason that might sway them –

" – sake, Munakata, humans have laws about this kind of thing. Not that you're legally bound by them, but I thought you had more of a hard-on for that kind of shit than this."

Approaching the empty room in the corridor the two had turned down, Izumo slowed at the sound of the voices coming from one of the rooms, and the meaning behind them.

Again, he felt compelled to wonder _what the hell_?

"Laws?" came Munakata's low voice, strangely baffled. "I thought I was quite familiar with human laws. What precisely is annoying you about—"

"He's underage, Munakata."

_Oh, fuck._

"Under the age of what?" asked the demon.

"Of consent, you idiot!" snapped Mikoto. "Fuck me, since when were you the obtuse one of the two of us?"

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

"No he isn't," said Munakata. "The legal age of consent in Japan is sixteen."

There was a brief pause.

"I thought it was eighteen?"

"That's because you, like many of the population, watch too many American movies where that is true. I really don't see why you're upset, Suoh – my human was hurt, so I healed him – "

"When you say healed, do you mean with a spell, or – "

"I mean with my natural ability, of course."

" _Shit_. Demon, you know what that does to people, fuck's sake…"

"Of course I'm well aware of that after so many… interesting situations over the years. I just don't see why you're upset about it. Fushimi-kun was well aware of the nature of the liaison and had no complaints, in fact he certainly seemed to enjoy the experience – "

"Okay!"

Izumo practically yelled out at the two of them, wishing he could erase what he'd just heard because it threw the whole situation into a new light. One thing about demons you could almost always count on was their general lack of understanding when it came to human sexual relationships – of the social aspect if not the purely physical, and this seemed like yet another thing they'd have to look at, but.

Both angel and demon looked at him, the one with exasperation, the other still politely confused, and he sighed.

"Focus, guys," he reminded them. "JUNGLE wants those notebooks for some reason. My guess is Fushimi Niki was researching cross-dimensional transmogrification, among other things – Fushimi-kun certainly had a strong reaction to hearing the term back at the meeting."

Munakata was predictably the first to seize on this.

"You are correct," he said.

Mikoto rolled his eyes.

"So we'll get to this later, okay?" Izumo asked the both of them.

"Agreed," said Munakata, nodding.

He walked out towards the way they'd come from, and Mikoto followed with a groan, but Izumo held him back just a few seconds, long enough to whisper, "Would he hurt him?" because even though he'd been the one to try and get their minds back on the matter at hand, he had to know.

But with the way Mikoto sighed and shook his head, Izumo could at least be sure Fushimi was safe from intentional harm, receiving the impression rather that Mikoto saw this as merely an _unwise_ pairing, and unwise enough that even he had felt compelled to comment, which Izumo couldn't say he disagreed with.

Of course, because it never rained but it poured, by the time they'd got back to the room with the cube – gone for a minute at most – Fushimi and Yata were back to yelling at each other, or the other was at the one, at any rate.

" – So what was it doing with your father's things!? You know the mage they took me to said they wouldn't have expected anyone outside a super-rich collector to have a set and we never did figure out who could have cast that fucking spell!"

Fushimi was standing stilted, eyes like he'd seen a ghost staring out from a neutral expression. Eyes so haunted, Izumo actually turned to Munakata to see if he would stop this before it got to a point Izumo was suddenly truly afraid for it to go.

Yata's face by contrast burned with rage, or something trying to be rage, because there was so much fear in him at that moment that Izumo was lost for what to do. Like everyone else he stood there, and watched.

"What does Misaki _think_ it's doing there?" Fushimi asked, voice small but sharp like pinpricks. "Didn't I say only this evening that there were powerful things in that man's collection?"

"But you knew this was here, Saruhiko, I can tell you did! So why didn't you tell me – "

He stopped. His breath hitched.

And then he started again.

"How long were you trying to get a hold of your dad's stuff before you finally decided you were going to kill him for it?" His lips trembled, and he choked out, "Were you even casting spells on me beforehand?"

_No,_ thought Izumo. _No, Yata, that's wrong. Fushimi isn't the experimenter, it was his father!_

Only Yata didn't have what Izumo had read in the notebook for context for that, because Izumo hadn't had the heart to tell him, and Yata had found out people he'd thought were his friends had hated him all along before.

And before Izumo could cut in, a grin was splitting Fushimi's face like a wound.

"Why so surprised, Misaki?" he asked, the weirdest look in his eyes and an odd kind of quiet in his voice that Izumo found himself compelled to listen to when he should have been yelling at the boy to stop and just admit to what was really going on before he did something irreversible. "It's not like you died or anything."

Yata dropped the other's arms with an expression less of heartbreak and more just broken. Then he ran off towards the elevator shaft, levitating himself like a comet as he went to flee the building.

"Yata!" Izumo cried. "Yata, wait!"

He ran after him but stopped halfway there, turning back to look at Fushimi even as one of the warlocks in blue tapped his arm, announced "I'll go after him!" and vanished in that direction, and maybe Izumo should have found that a weird thing for the other to have done but right then and there he'd lost his self-restraint and any sensible fear he might have had of Fushimi's protector – and, apparently, _lover_ – being in the room, stormed back over to the wretch and grabbed him around the shoulders, shaking him furiously.

Fushimi was too stunned to protest, as Izumo practically yelled at him –

"Why!?"

He received no answer. So he repeated himself.

"Why did you do that, you stupid kid!? Just think for a minute and ask yourself _why_ , why really you just did that!?"

Averting his eyes, Fushimi only mumbled, "It was the truth, after all – "

"No it wasn't!" Izumo hissed back at him, with another violent shake. "I read enough of the one dropped notebook to know, it was your father who did the experiments in magic – on you, and obviously at the end on Yata, and that must have been what finally pushed you into doing what you did!"

He let that sink in, horrifying the kid to know that someone else knew, sure, but he had to add,

"Do you really resent him that much for it!?"

Like an explosion, Fushimi's eyes widened.

And began to shine.

And water.

 

*~*~*

 

 


	11. The Hybrid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I had hoped to have this up before last weekend, but 52% of my country just apparently decided suicide was painless, and now the economy has tanked, the government's imploded and it's been difficult to write while banging my head against the wall. 
> 
> But you guys don't come here for politics, and in this instalment: Munakata does something really creepy (as usual), there's some hot Yata/Doumyoji action and something huge is revealed. 
> 
> Bonus points to anyone who knows what movie I shamelessly stole part of the initial dream-sequence from.

 

 

*~*~*

 

_The third dream that comes to Saruhiko cannot possibly be prophetic._

_He's sitting at the same table he'd dreaded back at the old house, waiting for whatever vile concoction That Person had dreamt up to force down his throat that time, knowing if he could just endure another few minutes he could leave and return to the demon's side…_

_But the old clock on the wall is going backwards._

_He looks down at his plate and sees a beetle walking around the rim, black shell flashing viridian in the light coming from all around. The beetle's leg is tied with a fine thread to a nail hammered down through the centre of the dish into the table. Niki had shown him this once before, how the beetle walked round and round in the circle and the string pulled it tighter and tighter against the nail, until it was all tied up and couldn't move, grinning like a monster._

_But here, the thread always stays the same length. The beetle never gets any closer to the nail, he just keeps going round and round. It's almost even worse like that._

_Niki sits down across from him._

_"Do you know what kind of beetle that is, Monkey?" he asks, with the same grin on his face._

_Saruhiko can't speak. He's only just realised he's completely tied up to the chair with some other kind of thread._

_Niki leans in._

_"The answer's in my books," he says._

_He laughs until Saruhiko wakes up, but it can't be prophecy._

_The man's dead, after all._

 

*~*~*

 

 

_"Why did you do it?"_

He'd said why, hadn't he?

_"Just think for a minute and ask yourself why,_ why _really you just did that!?"_

And hadn't he just said he knew? Why should he have to think over it anymore?

_"Do you really resent him that much!?"_

…

The larger part of That Person's research was lying in wait in the Archive under a protective spell. The inventory suggested Yukari and whoever his accomplice was had made off with just over a fifth of it, but since the books were all cursed those who had made the inventory hadn't been able to figure out what each book contained: it turned out Kisa had had to begrudgingly pay off the families of two people who had died trying to do so.

She'd been her usual warm and loving self, back at the tower. Anyway, it was anyone's guess as to what information exactly JUNGLE now had.

Only Saruhiko, and those powerful enough for it to make no difference either way would be able to read what was within them unscathed. The morning would see them shift a number of the books to Kokujoji and Weismann to deal with – a fact that had annoyed Munakata even as he'd smiled and said they were in an alliance after all.

Saruhiko could tell even after less than two weeks that that was what the other had been feeling.

HOMRA would focus on capturing a Maleboge parasite, as studying was hardly what you'd call Suoh's strong suit. But Saruhiko felt the best thing to do would be for him and Munakata to go over as much of what they were going to give to Kokujoji and Weismann now while they had the chance.

Munakata had other ideas.

"Bedtime, Fushimi-kun," he murmured, reclining against the window as he sat on the sill back in Saruhiko's room.

Saruhiko rolled his eyes.

"I know you didn't get your rocks off earlier thanks to that break-in, Captain, but is this really the time for that?"

And, oh yeah – he and his demon master were now fucking. That had been enjoyable enough though, so at least something was going right.

Said demon smiled. "I can assure you I am in no state of distress," he said. "But you need your rest."

Rolling his eyes again, Saruhiko reluctantly pulled his blue coat off and threw it over the chair, wincing at the slight pain in his upper arms where Kusanagi had grabbed him. He sure had been upset.

Well, it wasn't the kind of pain he wanted, and now things like that were easy enough to get rid of. He unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged it off his shoulders and walked back to Munakata.

"Heal me," he said.

Munakata blinked and then appraised each arm in turn. The bruises were small enough that it was pretty petty of him to demand something be done about them, but since he had the opportunity…

The demon smiled. Saruhiko suppressed a shiver from the look in his midnight eyes.

"Of course," he replied.

He leant over to kiss each arm in turn; softly, like they had a very different relationship, and then to Saruhiko's surprise instead of letting that blue tongue work them over Munakata recoiled a few inches and said something under his breath that Saruhiko thought was probably in Aramaic.

The spell was not one he knew; he tensed up a little and was surprised to think his reaction hadn't been more pronounced. But after feeling another, less comfortable shiver in both arms he found the marks and the slight pain had vanished.

Saruhiko frowned. "You didn't use…?"

"Disappointed?" asked Munakata, with a smirk – his tongue flickering out as if to prove it was still there.

Clicking his own, Saruhiko drew back a little. Munakata chuckled.

"I'm afraid the ability only works on wounds inflicted by demons, or objects from that world," he said, and before Saruhiko could ask, added, "I might have taken the liberty of surreptitiously replacing the fire you used to burn yourself with one I had produced, for that reason."

"You can do that?" Saruhiko asked. He was too impressed to be annoyed.

"I can. Fire is not really my element, however, so some of what you had summoned did remain. You, despite belonging to me, are of yourself entirely human."

Well, of course he was. How could he be anything else?

His eyes fell on the book Munakata had been reading; the one Niki had left for him, detailing all their happy family memories and hopefully something useful too. Not for the first time he had to make concerted effort to slow his breathing, to ignore the sudden hammering of his heart when he thought about those other strangers reading the same. He understood why it had to be that way, and knew he shouldn't have cared besides – it was all done and in the past, but still.

"That's why there's still a mark over the brand," he observed, to try and take his mind off it.

"I could remove that with a different spell, if you'd like?"

Saruhiko shook his head. He was still looking at the book.

"That man…" he started, fingers curling into fists, "he really thought he could do it. I remember, I had this toy – just a plastic lizard or something."

He had to stop, because even though it had been so long ago, and had been such a stupid thing to be upset over, the memory still made his stomach twist like he was that stupid, long-ago child again.

Munakata only waited patiently for him to continue, which at length he did, still breathing slowly.

"Anyway, he took it away one day and when he brought it back to me it was all… grey, and melted and you could barely recognise it – and he said, 'look, it's a demon toy now!'."

"Had he actually been able to transmogrify it?"

Saruhiko could only shrug. "I don't know. It's what he wanted me to think, and it wasn't the first time either. Later he did tricks with living insects, I always assumed he'd transported them – replaced them with something from Hell to trick me." He had to take an even deeper, longer breath. "But I suppose if JUNGLE was this interested in his research…"

"Hm..." said Munakata, like he was considering the matter.

There was a long pause, and Saruhiko's thoughts about this and about Misaki and even about Munakata warred against each other for dominance until the demon said,

"Well, at any rate it's enough for tonight. I still need to maintain adequate energy input in you or Suoh will be even more of a nuisance than he usually is."

Saruhiko stared.

"That's it?"

"For now I'm afraid it is, Fushimi-kun."

With a sigh, Saruhiko rubbed his eyes.

"Don't you think there are things a little bit more important than sleep to deal with right now, Captain? You probably don't even need to sleep," he added bitterly.

It only seemed to amuse the demon, who didn't address this addition, but told him calmly, "I have everything under control. Even Yata Misaki is being watched carefully."

Even Yata Misaki.

The sound of the name made his breath catch in his throat. He should have brought up how that didn't really answer his question about the whole stopping the unfathomable power from falling into the hands of a bunch of psychos thing trumping an indulgence like sleep that could be waved off for weeks with the right combination of spells – and Saruhiko should know, because that was another thing Niki had done.

He should have brought up that little detour the demon and Suoh Mikoto had taken away from prying eyes that hadn't been brought up once they'd returned and he and Misaki had made things so awkward, or what the whole history between them and Weismann was. Or that whatever Munakata might have said, Saruhiko still owed him 'one' from their little indiscretion earlier.

He should have brought up any number of things. But hearing the name made his eyes water again, and he dropped his head forward, digging his nails into his skin to try and stifle the tears.

It didn't work.

Munakata had taken his outer coat off when his arms wrapped around Saruhiko's bare shoulders. Where Saruhiko might once have felt in danger or intruded upon he could now only sense the demon's unbelievable power wrapped around him like it was a shield that could protect him from the awful truth, and he crumpled forward into his lap, sobbing.

Because the awful truth had been spoken; by Kusanagi of all people. His answer to the question of why it was so important Misaki not learn the history behind his Damnation.

Oh, there might have been some do-gooder figment in his head that had suggested itself once or twice, saying, 'I didn't want Misaki to be hurt because I'd suffered for his sake!', but that wasn't something he'd really entertained as an answer because he knew it was the wrong one. Saruhiko wasn't really that kind of person.

No, Kusanagi was right, it had been the exact opposite.

He'd _wanted_ Misaki to suffer.

He really had.

And he hadn't wanted to want it, but –

_I did all this for you, and you wouldn't even look at me anymore. How dare you. How dare you! It was supposed to be just the two of us forever, look at everything I gave up for that and you still turn your stupid, blind eyes to all of it! You idiot. You idiot!_

Had he planned on something like that, even subconsciously? Had it really been the whim like it felt? That satisfaction he'd had in seeing that heartbroken look on the other boy's face, the one he'd had all those years ago when he'd realised those other worthless cretins hadn't liked him either – was that really what he'd been desiring to see?

At least Misaki had been looking at him, then. At least he'd been sharing in some of Saruhiko's pain.

Weren't they supposed to be together?

"At this stage, Fushimi-kun, what that would require would be for me to take possession of Yata Misaki's soul as well, and that is something I currently have no interest in, nor do I see one developing in the future."

Saruhiko tensed against the demon's chest, realising he'd voiced his last question out loud.

"You and I, however, will remain together for a very long time."

His racing heart suddenly stumbled with an uneven flutter, and then began to finally slow down.

"I wanted him to be in pain like me," he admitted, in a whisper.

Munakata pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"That's not all you wanted, is it?" he said. Saruhiko felt too drained in moments to think for himself what that might mean – he was relieved when Munakata elaborated for him. "You wanted to prove that your friendship had meant enough to Yata Misaki that the thought it had never existed caused him pain. Learning what you had done for his sake would have obliged him to feel pain even if he hadn't cared about you before. This way, you finally proved he did."

Saruhiko let a few more tears fall, curling tighter against Munakata's chest.

"And so, despite all this, I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning."

What a demon – to make such a useless-sounding platitude seem so genuinely reassuring. For all Saruhiko knew, he was using magic to make him feel calmer, but in feeling calmer he didn't really care either way and when Munakata reached up to stroke his hair he leaned against the touch.

Then his sovereign overlord decided to start humming; a slow and haunting tune floating out into the dark blue room like drops of ink into water, and the words to the tune followed shortly thereafter.

" _Soft in an orchard; A lark in a tree; Sees a boy dancing; Bright on a lea_

_Sweetest of screaming; Cries through the deep; By twilight her singing; Binds him in sleep_

_Free from the angels; Flesh on the dell; Beneath him the water; Running to Hell_

_The child sleeps onwards; Far from the lark; Forever falling; Into the dark."_

…

Saruhiko fell asleep much too soon to ask about it. It was just like Munakata to make him do that though, even with no other magic but the sound of his voice.

 

*~*~*

 

 

For the fourth time that morning, Yata's skateboard skimmed off the edge of the pavement and he had to jump back off it to avoid crashing onto the asphalt. He kicked at the concrete furiously.

_Weren't you supposed to be good at at least that thing, Mi-sa-ki?_

"Stupid Saru," he hissed, clenching his fists.

"Yata-san, are you okay!?"

And there was the one person who, in that singular second, was pissing him off even more than the damn monkey.

"How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off, faerie!?" he yelled back.

It had been two days and he still didn't even know the guy's name.

"I told you, Yata Misaki, my name is Doumyoji!" said the guy with a groan.

Okay, so that was his name. Whatever, Yata would probably forget it again before lunch. If he was planning on having lunch, which he wasn't. Mikoto-san had decided HOMRA needed to capture a Maleboge Parasite and so Yata wasn't coming back until he had one in hand – he could run off magical energy for a while yet. Long enough to complete his task.

"Don't say my first name!" Yata ordered.

Doumyoji rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay," he said. "I guess you're fine, even though I haven't seen you eat in two days and it's beginning to get too cold for a t-shirt."

"I didn't ask you to follow me around!" Yata reminded him. "I've told you to get the hell off my back ever since you showed up!"

The hybrid gave him a shrug like there was nothing he could do about it.

"Hey, I'm following orders from my Captain," he said.

Yata didn't know if that asshole demon could really be called a 'Captain' like he was in the military or something; demons didn't have a 'military' in that sense – their 'generals' had those titles in that that was just what people called them: they'd lead other demons into battle now and again, but there was no system in place that awarded them a rank – and he definitely wasn't part of any official armed force of any human nation.

It had been Saruhiko who'd explained Demon Generals to him back when Eric had first joined them, when he'd been talking about what the demon world was like, since Eric's father had apparently worked for one.

But hey, maybe he'd been lying about that too.

_Stupid Saru. You idiot. You idiot!_

"Like I give a shit about your stupid demon," he shouted. "For all I know he's going to betray us too!"

In fact, Yata would have said that was pretty likely, given he was… well, given he was a soul-stealing demon for one thing! Sure, Mikoto-san might have said Saruhiko was safe enough with him, but he'd also said he didn't trust him, and that was before they'd found out Saruhiko had done all this on purpose anyway – !

Urgh! He couldn't stop thinking about him, him and his terrible smile. Him and his stupid, stupid, being such an asshole, why did Yata ever even spend a second on a guy like him!?

He can't have meant it. He had to have been lying.

Why would he lie about a thing like that though?

Honestly Yata had been wracking his mind trying to come up with some kind of explanation, but in vain – it was like there was a fire inside his head that burned all his attempts at figuring this out away, a furious, raging sense of betrayal he couldn't lift up from off his shoulders.

…

… he had to find one of those fucking parasites. Before the half-faerie annoyed him to death.

"What?" said the other, stupidly. "I'm sure the Captain wouldn't do that! He's like… the universe. Yeah."

Yata stopped and turned around, partly assuming he must have heard that wrong, partly knowing he hadn't.

"What."

"You know!" the bright-eyed weirdo waved his arms, wrists flexing in circular motions. "Whooooooosh. Right?"

After a time, Yata spoke again.

"You're just an idiot, aren't you?"

And turned back to the direction he was going before. He groaned when he heard the hybrid jog to catch up.

"That's definitely what Fushimi-san says," he said. "So I guess you guys have still has something in common – "

The demon's servant was cut off when Yata turned back, grabbed him and shoved him against the wall with all his strength, brutally letting the guy's head clunk back against the wall, which stayed him for a split second and had him yelling instead,

"Don't ever compare me to that guy again, you bastard! He's nothing to do with me anymore!"

"Oww…" said the guy.

Then, to Yata's complete confusion, he grinned, and kept on talking.

"When I first got here he told me Munakata was planning to take over the world, and that he commanded an entire army through a portal in a secret room on the other side of the complex."

Yata pushed him harder, anger growing by the second, but he continued talking nonetheless.

"… which turned out to be the ladies' shower room when I went to check it out to make sure. Good thing Awashima-san had already finished her bath and had the towel on, for my sake. Kamo's usually there to tell me when that guy's lying to get me into trouble."

Lying.

It was a lie. It had to be.

But why would he be so cruel that he'd make Yata believe that, if he wasn't cruel enough for it to be true? Either way his grip loosened, because annoying beyond all belief or no the half-faerie was at least telling him what he actually wanted to hear.

After more than two weeks of nothing but bad news after bad news, from that awful moment Anna had lifted her head up and whispered Saruhiko's name, just before Totsuka had stumbled down the stairs with a bleeding hand…

"I know it isn't easy to find someone you can trust in our situation," said the hybrid. And he was right, the magical world was full of assholes trying to use each other to grow their own power. "I don't know if things have changed since back in the day, but…"

"Back in the day?" Yata repeated, now confused again.

"Oh, that 'Fox' asshole captured my soul in an illegal contract and put me in stasis back in 1952. Captain only rescued me and some others from the last hundred years or so about a week ago."

1952!?

Stepping back almost immediately, Yata stared: his mind not knowing where to turn first turned nowhere and for a while he was just standing there blankly, but it was the most important thing first that finally got him to speak.

"You… you've been gone for almost seventy years? But what about all the people you knew back in – "

He stopped as soon as he saw the smile on the other man's face go tight.

Fuck.

"… why are you working for the demon, after that?"

That seemed a much lighter question for the man. He shrugged.

"Well, he made the offer to all of us; give us employment in compensation for what had happened and we were all familiar with magic in one way or another so we'd have wanted a job in this area… plus it would mean we'd all stick together."

He rubbed the back of his head.

"And I guess Munakata-san just seemed like an interesting guy. I mean, I never thought I'd trust a demon who had a human soul in his possession, but the way he and Fushimi-san are… I don't know how to describe it. But what I'm really saying is I don't think Fushimi-san was telling the truth back there. You know, my Nana always said 'only a man with a worthless soul would treat his soul as worthless enough to give away'."

Worthless? Whatever else Saruhiko was, he definitely wasn't that, and it irked Yata to hear the word applied to him despite his anger.

But the time-travelling hybrid wasn't finished.

"I know what that sounds like, but it's an old phrase, from an old source, and when you know that source you know what it really means is that it's not… _us,_ or society, or a higher power who sees any soul as worthless. Only the Damned themselves."

He looked Yata right in the eyes.

"People who know what a Damnation truly entails don't do it, don't ever do it, unless there's a part of them that feels like they deserve it."

The image of Saruhiko, Saruhiko and his terrible smiling, gazing into him as his hand swept fire across his chest and melted his own skin jumped up before Yata's eyes.

It wasn't really a revelation to him. Just a formalisation of thoughts his anger hadn't let him explore properly. He grit his teeth, and looked down at a ground he wished felt more solid.

"Then he should have just been honest about that," he said. "And I still don't understand what was going on back then, did he screw something up and was too embarrassed to tell me that was why the deafness happened?" he scoffed, because the guy in front of him could only shrug again. "Bastard knows I screw stuff up all the time – he's always going on about it! Fucking asshole."

Yata was beginning to run the real risk of beginning to cry if they kept talking about this, so he dug his nails into his palms, sniffed, and said gruffly,

"What was your name again?"

The hybrid groaned. "Doumyoji!" he practically yelled. "Doumyoji Andy!"

"Right. Well, listen, Doumyoji – whatever's going on with Saruhiko, I'm still on a mission for Mikoto-san to capture a Maleboge Parasite, and even if we're allies I don't have the time to stand around chatting where people could get hurt – "

" – Everyone mostly ran off as soon as you started yelling there, Yata-san – "

" – and," he growled. "I don't need you babysitting me for whatever weird reason your demon might have in mind."

He called his dropped skateboard back to himself with simple magic and set it on the pavement.

"I could help you find one of the JUNGLE players?" offered Doumyoji.

And now he was annoying again.

"I don't need your help!"

"There's one on the corner there, pointing some future-tech at us."

"Huh!?"

Yata turned around in the direction Doumyoji was pointing just in time to see a weedy, lanky looking guy in black leather and eye-makeup see him looking and almost drop the phone he'd been filming them with in shock, cross-shaped earrings shaking as he turned his head from side to side to look for an escape.

Yata's eyes narrowed. He looked back to Doumyoji in annoyance and rolled his eyes at the hybrid's dumb, cheerful look.

"You'd better not get in my way," he snapped and jumped onto the board, ignoring Doumyoji's cry of "Yay!" behind him.

At this point the JUNGLE player – and his phone was exuding that aura so that had to be what he was; good for Doumyoji for spotting it when this power was so weak, he supposed – really did drop his phone, and as Yata sped towards him he was clearly too alarmed to know whether to go back for it or run away, and kept standing there – looking from one direction to another in rapid succession.

"HEY YOU!" Yata bellowed out at him.

The guy made a pathetic little frightened noise, flinched back and immediately tripped over himself and fell on his backside, but that shock seemed to finally snap him out of whatever stupor he'd been in and he got to his phone just before Yata could reach him and typed something onto the screen.

A barrier that flashed green materialised like an online pop-up ad between them; not a powerful one, but Yata still smacked right into it and shot back from the board, skidding backwards to stop himself from falling over.

The JUNGLE player took the opportunity to scramble to his feet and headed straight around the corner, only to be knocked off to the side when a section of the brickwork suddenly exploded.

A large piece whizzed through the air and clipped Yata's ear. He whirled around to find Doumyoji standing there with that stupid sword drawn, blinking in bewilderment at whatever spell he'd just cast.

"Huh," he said. "Maybe I should have practiced that one first."

Yata had a horrible sense then and there that this was what other people felt like when they were dealing with _him_.

But they had no time for that; the emo-looking guy quickly recovered and with another few taps on his phone a series of bright green lights that looked kind of like paper birds materialised in front of him and began to flap their way towards Yata.

They may not have looked like much, but Yata knew an attempt at an attack when he saw one, and as the guy turned and ran again right after he must have intended them as a distraction. Yata narrowed his eyes, concentrating – something he did better in a fight than he did anywhere else – and then took note of where all the light-birds were.

As Doumyoji ran past him, as if he was just assuming Yata would take care of the whole attack, Yata let out a large burst of energy he'd focussed on until it became dense, slamming into the light-birds and shattering them.

"Hey!" he shouted at the half-faerie's back. "Don't you dare think you can do with you want with that guy; he's mine!"

Doumyoji only laughed, which somehow was turning the corners of Yata's mouth up without him meaning them to.

Getting back on his board, he skated around the corner to find the hybrid in mid-leap, twisting in the air like a trapeze-artist and flopping back down in front of their target; which was a cool move, except that he misjudged his landing spot and the guy collided into him a split-second later, flooring them both.

That was Yata's chance though, and with his speciality the best chance at capturing the guy so far as he could see would be to just beat him into unconsciousness, rather than to use a trap-spell.

Fine by him – he had a lot of frustration to work out. He didn't even use more than a little enhanced strength magic when he slammed his fist into the guy's head.

"Whoah!"

Doumyoji cried out as their target was thrown over him and rolled up a few feet away with a choked-off cry.

"You'll stay down if you know what's good for you, asshole!" Yata yelled at the guy.

Unfortunately, it seemed that wasn't the last in his bag of tricks, and he must have had some kind of bodily protection if not just a really hard head. His phone slipped out of his grip but he scrambled to push in a few last keys even as it lay on the ground, and then there was this weird, high-pitched whine that blocked his hearing and blurred his vision until there was only a mismatched kaleidoscope of shifting, meaningless lights and colours before him.

Had Doumyoji not been so close to him, he wouldn't have known that the hand that almost instantly grabbed his arm was his and might have attacked. As it was, he accepted it begrudgingly, tugging a little to try and get him to let go even as he also wracked his brain for some solution to the sudden sensory deprivation.

That was one of the things Yata hated most in the world, after all, and maybe he wasn't entirely without relief as well, that someone had grabbed onto him when he could neither see nor hear.

But comfort hadn't been what Doumyoji had had in mind, he persevered against Yata's tugging, used him to stand back up and then increased pressure, jerking Yata's body so that his arm was point out at an angle. When he pointedly shook it twice in the same position Yata understood.

Doumyoji could still see, somehow, and he was aiming for him.

Not that he trusted the guy, but it wasn't like he had anything to lose either. He gathered a large burst of energy for a concussive blast and fired it.

"ARGH!"

At once, sight and sound returned and Yata shook his head to get rid of that awful uncanny sensation. Ahead of him the JUNGLE player was face-first on the pavement, moaning and slightly smoking. His phone was a foot or so away, screen cracked. Yata promptly strolled up and kicked it away from him.

"Uh, we may need that, you know," Doumyoji pointed out, between panting for breath, as Yata only just realised he himself was.

"Shut up!" he told him. "Of course I know that!"

As he went to pick the item up, he saw his unlikely ally scurry over to their prisoner, mumbling something under his breath that sent out a little shockwave – at which the moaning stopped and the guy went still.

"He dead?" Yata asked.

"Nah, we wouldn't be able to get the parasite out like that. Hopefully JUNGLE can't extract it remotely."

Yata glanced closer and observed the guy breathing.

"What was that thing he used?"

With a little shudder, Doumyoji brushed his hands off against his coat.

"Variety of banshee-screech, I'd say," he said. "Calibrated for half-youkai only, or it would have deafened and blinded him too." He grinned. "Didn't count on my sixth sense though, did he? I can always tell these things."

The boast made Yata snort and roll his eyes just as he was taking his own phone out of his pocket to call for a pick up. Then he re-thought over what the demon's servant had just said, and stopped.

"Wait, how did he make it affect me then?"

"Huh? Oh, right – I meant all 'Others', not just the ones you'd call 'Youkai'. I can never remember which term encompasses all the beings of the Fourth world and which are localised." He shrugged. "Anyway, I didn't know what type your other parent was, only that you were a hybrid."

"What?" said Yata, with a confused laugh.

Someone must have given this guy bad info, maybe even Saruhiko for all he knew since he was such a liar. He elaborated.

"Who told you that? I'm not half-youkai, or half anything – I'm just a warlock."

Doumyoji blinked and cocked his head. "Huh? No one told me, it was just something I noticed. I'm good at that kind of thing, that's why I was saying ' _our_ situation' earlier."

So he'd meant them both being hybrids, rather than just… only they weren't both hybrids. Yata's mother was baseline human, and he might not have remembered much of his dad, but that guy had definitely also been human, so there you had it.

"Well, obviously you're not that good," he said, ribbing the other a little. "Yatagarasu is purely one hundred percent human, for your information. Maybe you didn't recognise the fact that Mikoto-san's brand gives me access to some angelic power."

Still frowning, and now looking concerned – concerned over a simple mistake? What was with this guy – Doumyoji insisted, "No, I know the difference between stuff from the First world and the Fourth, and you're definitely not one hundred percent human – not even three-quarters, if you asked me, only now you mention it it's like there's some kind of filter I can't properly focus on…"

"Look, I'm telling you I'm human!" Yata snapped, and somewhere in his chest there was a little tendril, a shoot of panic there was no reason for him to have, and he put one foot on his board in preparation to bolt.

"Personally…"

Both Yata and Doumyoji straightened up suddenly, at the sound of the silky voice that swept towards them from the corner they'd chased the JUNGLE player around to catch him down.

Standing just beyond the crater Doumyoji had blasted into the wall, in a long dark coat, was a young man with a grossly over-pretty face, long hair, and eyes that sparkled like the little lights in Hell. A sword was hanging casually off his hip as he leant side-on against the wall.

Yata's sense of danger went off immediately.

"… I think you're both right." The man smiled. "But then, I know something you don't know."

He sing-songed that last bit, flicking a strand of wavy hair behind his shoulder.

"Mishakuji Yukari," growled Doumyoji. Yata stared, then wrinkled his nose.

This was the guy who'd helped to kill his former teacher and tried the same on his own fellow student; his brother for all intents and purposes and that made him far worse than the other members of JUNGLE that Yata knew of.

Yukari looked right back into his eyes, and his pretty face morphed into a sneer.

"Now," he said. "That's not a very beautiful look at all."

A moment later, the world around him burst.

 

*~*~*

 

_"By 'little demons' I'll assume you mean 'new', because it's pretty much the same as angels. Dead demon matter phases back into Hell and collects at random energy spots to form a chrysalis. Sometimes the new-born does have a 'child' stage, and sometimes they never grow out of it – which doesn't happen with angels, but aside from that it's very much the same."_

_"Child demons. I guess that's why there's apparently demon lullabies?"_

_"Well, there's that. On occasion a demon will raise a half-human child in Hell, although that's very rare, they almost always stay on Earth with the mother. And then there are the fully human children who become Damned."_

_He pauses. Those eyes are on him. He's not a child, but he is._

_"There's no reason they shouldn't have their own songs, after all."_

_Forever falling._

_Into the dark._

_"… that lullaby was fucking creepy as shit, by the way."_

_"My apologies, Fushimi-kun. I thought you liked it at the time."_

_…_

_"I didn't say I didn't like it."_

 

*~*~*

 

 


	12. The Trapdoor Spider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys - I'm surprisingly not writing well into the night like a zombie, so I have more space for a witty innuendo-filled chapter summary. In this chapter...
> 
> ...
> 
> ... uh, full penetration! No, I didn't use that joke before! ... not in the /beginning/ notes anyway...
> 
> Enjoy!

 

*~*~*

 

 

"I shouldn't have been so harsh," Izumo muttered, running his fingers through his hair.

Only in the seconds after he'd made those accusations back at the tower had he realised that Fushimi hadn't been _consciously_ punishing Yata for his own choices. But at the same time, even now there was a little voice in his head that said, _No. You weren't harsh enough_. Yata was part of their 'host' after all. Their clan.

And yet, wasn't Fushimi also?

Or was he?

"Nn," said Mikoto, helpful as ever.

Izumo rolled his eyes and dropped his head forward onto his arms, resting them on the bar while Anna patted his back comfortingly.

"Harsh or not," said Totsuka gently, putting a glass in front of him, "it was something he had to think about. And maybe things had to get worse before they got better."

The smell of the drink alone told Izumo that his fellow Nephilim had made it wrong, but all the same he swallowed half of it in a single gulp.

"Well, they can definitely only go up," he said. Then his head began to swim and he realised he should have eaten something.

His head dropped back down onto his arms.

"What do you think, Awashima-san?" asked Totsuka.

When he put his own version of the Yuki-Onna's favourite drink in front of her, teaspoon or so of red bean paste stirred carefully inside, Seri – who Munakata had nominated as his liaison to their group – cocked her head and frowned at the glass.

Without a word, she took a further small packet of red paste out of one of her pockets and squeezed it in too. Izumo could see Totsuka struggling not to flinch.

"Fushimi-kun has certainly acted foolishly," she said, once she'd taken an initial sip of the concoction. "However, it is not the prerogative of your 'host' to interfere with the Captain's property."

That one, Totsuka couldn't hold back a flinch from, and Mikoto – if Izumo wasn't imagining things – heated the temperature of the room a degree or two; he wasn't sure if it had been on purpose.

Seri didn't seem to notice, or if she did she hardly seemed to think she'd said something wrong. Youkai as a whole, after all, did not have the same compunctions as most humans or angels when it came to referring to sentient beings as 'property'.

And yet, there was something… unnerved in her expression, as she admitted, "I must say, I am… surprised that a human as sharp and clever as Fushimi-kun did something so terminally short-sighted, young as he is."

Izumo thought back to that cursed book, turning his head so that his voice wasn't muffled.

"People in desperate situations do stupid things," he muttered. "Even smart people."

Mikoto snorted.

"That's what they said about Iwafune," he said darkly.

There was also that to take into account. Much as neither Izumo nor anyone else there knew exactly what it was that Iwafune had done that was so 'stupid', apart from trying to affect cross-dimensional transmogrification. Simply 'trying' to do so wouldn't have caused all this: at least one of his previous attempts had to have ended in disaster for so many people to have been so on edge.

And Izumo couldn't deny that he was losing patience. But he wasn't losing faith, not in Mikoto, so he didn't ask yet for him to explain anything. He only wished Mikoto could find the same faith in him to know it was okay to say it without being asked.

"Oi, the demon and Fushimi-san are here!"

Kamamoto called out from the booth nearest the entrance, where he'd probably still been trying to contact Yata over a bowl of fried rice.

Poor Yata. Izumo had felt the best thing to do would be to leave him for a few days, but he had to admit with everything going on he was beginning to feel it was time to bring him home.

As for Munakata and Fushimi showing up, that hadn't been expected. Though as he'd said, he had faith in Mikoto, so seeing him barely glance at the door his… whatever Munakata was to him was opening even then, the bell ringing, set Izumo's mind at ease.

And the double-take Mikoto did looking again at Fushimi also failed to spur him into action, even though Izumo was quite sure that meant Mikoto could tell the pair had had sex again. He preferred not to think about that too hard either.

"Welcome, welcome," he called out to the pair. They were dressed in Munakata's usual style. "What can I get you?"

Munakata's eyes flashed a little, behind his glasses.

"I'm afraid we're on duty, Kusanagi-san. Another time, perhaps?"

Mikoto snorted.

"What duty?" he asked. "You don't work for anyone."

"Well, forgive my adherence to human social customs, Suoh – I thought one of us should have some courtesy."

Smirking, Mikoto just shook his head and pointedly swallowed down the rest of his own drink. Izumo had to concur with Mikoto on that one – it wasn't like Munakata could even get drunk on human alcohol at King-level.

Meanwhile, Fushimi clicked his tongue and avoided eye-contact with him. Izumo made no mention of it.

"Moving on to matters more important than Suoh's unseemly indulgences," Munakata continued, "Our perusal of the materials we secured from Fushimi Kisa's keeping has lead us to several conclusions we felt your group should be updated on."

"You mean the two of you or Kokujoji and Weismann as well?" asked Izumo.

Mikoto's fingers twitched around his glass at the mention of the name. Munakata glanced to him then back to Izumo, outwardly unaffected.

"Them as well," he acknowledged. "Adolf Weismann passed his conclusions on through Kokujoji-san, whose servants delivered them to me this morning. In effect, the most important news is that before he died Fushimi Niki had or had believed he had discovered a method by which cross-dimensional transmogrification could be done."

He let that sink in, while Izumo took a deep breath at the implications of such a thing, and then released it.

"We cannot say for certain that he was right about this. But, and especially given the interest of JUNGLE in the research, I for one believe it was."

Izumo put the glass he'd been holding down on the counter and ran his fingers through his hair.

"What happened to the transmogrified item, or items?" he asked.

"Not knowing that is why we cannot as of yet confirm their existence," said Munakata. "Though Fushimi Niki does not appear to have been what one would call cautious, he had… what I suppose you'd call a playful streak, that may have induced him to hide the fruits of his labours."

"Yeah, he sounds like a real clown," Mikoto muttered, pulling a cigarette from his jacket and lighting it with his power.

Their Fushimi looked totally impassive about the whole conversation, right up until that moment, when he cringed towards Munakata, and Izumo wondered if that had been because Suoh specifically had said something about his father – or because it had been anyone but the demon.

Since it wasn't of immediate importance though, he focussed on the matter at hand.

"Well, we'll have to find out where they were hidden. I personally am aware he did experiments in manipulating Void matter," as his attempt at a séance had proven, "so we can only hope he didn't send anything there, or there's no way we’ll ever know for sure."

That made Fushimi cringe even harder, breath halting for a second, causing Izumo to wonder further what in Heaven's name the boy's father had done involving the Void that the mere mention of it scared him so, and then to quickly decide he didn't want to know.

"Wait, wait, wait," said Kamamoto, turning everyone towards him since he'd been behind Munakata and Fushimi before, and had stood up from his seat at the booth. He flinched when he saw everyone's attention on him, but then said, "Izumo-san, when you say 'item' are you talking about a stone or a box or something, or do you mean an actual person?"

There was a silence that must have felt awkward for Kamamoto, since he felt the need to elaborate,

"I mean, when you were explaining everything about this to us and how JUNGLE fitted it you made it sound like that Iwafune guy wants to transmogrify his son, so is it possible to go that far?"

Munakata cleared his throat.

"We believe Fushimi Niki did begin his experiments on mere objects," – another twitch from the boy beside him – "But moved on to animals after. However, I would have expected to see some sign if something as complex as a person had been transmogrified. It begs the question of where the man would even get such a subject."

Izumo's eyes slid immediately to Fushimi himself, who he, Mikoto, and doubtless Munakata also knew full well had played the role of such a 'subject' enough for it to have come up on a random page Izumo had flicked to during his brief possession of one of Fushimi Niki's notebooks.

But Fushimi Niki had been, for lack of a better term, human, and Fushimi Kisa likewise. Izumo did not and never had detected the presence of anything else in Fushimi Saruhiko, and more than that even if there had been anything concealed there was no way Munakata wouldn't have realised it by now, what with their… closeness. The bond between a demon and the Damned alone did not lend itself to the latter keeping secrets. Since they were apparently even closer than that, and Munakata more than savvy enough to know, Izumo felt he could safely say Fushimi's father had never attempted to transmogrify him – or if he had he'd had no success in it.

However, just as he was about to announce this conclusion, Anna suddenly looked up from her marble and slid off the seat she'd had at the back of the bar. From the corner of his eye Izumo saw her approach Mikoto, and the room, knowing the powers of the Nephilim girl, fell silent.

Anna tugged lightly on Mikoto's jacket, giving him a serious look he returned, and for a time they only stared at each other.

"Mikoto…" she said, uncomfortably, and with a frown prodded the same jacket he kept his cigarettes in.

For a moment Mikoto's eyes narrowed; Izumo considered the possibility the angel might have seriously thought that she was asking for a smoke, but then a look of understanding came over him and he fished around in that pocket for whatever had caught Anna's attention.

…

It was a siren's tooth.

Probably the same one Yata had noticed back at the tower or another that had been dropped, the thing that had caused him such distress and some kind of misunderstanding that Izumo as of yet still didn't fully understand, because he knew it wasn't his business to. Mikoto handed it to Anna and she trotted away to present it to Munakata.

Izumo was missing something. Something right in front of him that…

Oh.

And Munakata tilted his head at the softly glowing item, a fang like glass that had been beaten by the sea, and asked…

"Fushimi-kun, I am aware the spell your father used on Yata-san had certain side-effects such as the temporary deafness, but if I might ask – do you know for sure that that was the _intended_ effect of the experiment?"

Before he could answer, Seri brought the question to a close by asking, "The half-siren boy? I would have thought that someone who was already a hybrid would be a poor choice for a transmogrifying experiment."

Fushimi went suddenly very still, like he'd been petrified.

"Yata isn't a hybrid," said Izumo, dully.

Mikoto gave him a slow and meaningful glance.

"Isn't he?" he asked, like he'd thought otherwise long before this moment.

Izumo shouldn't have been as surprised as he was. There would have been no reason for the two of them to discuss the heritage of a member of HOMRA – HOMRA accepted everyone, no questions asked. And if there had been a sealing spell of the kind the parents of hybrids often put on their children while they waited to discover what potential hazards their mixed blood might cause, one that some of their number had clearly seen through while some had not, well. There would have been no reason to discuss that either.

There was a sudden gasp from Fushimi, who appeared to be choking on the very air he was trying to breathe. The look in his eyes was as if his soul had fallen out of his body.

Munakata calmly put his hands around the boy's shoulders and looked left, starting, "Awashima-kun, I need you to contact Doumyoji-kun immediately to – "

Then Seri's phone started ringing.

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

The half-siren boy.

The half-siren boy.

_The half-siren boy._

The words just kept repeating themselves over and over in Saruhiko's head. Half-siren. Misaki. Half-siren.

When they'd first met, or rather when Misaki had first started to show interest in him, Saruhiko had of course run a battery of standard and not-standard tests to see if he'd been telling the truth about his intentions. You never knew in the magical world, after all, and Saruhiko had always considered it a mark of Misaki's boundless stupidity that he'd never asked Saruhiko to take any such tests in turn.

Thinking about that trust now made him lightheaded.

Anyway, those tests had, among other things, proved conclusively for him that Misaki was indeed fully human. There'd been no need for follow-up, since it wasn't like that was going to change – he'd thought, a thought that now threatened to have him laughing hysterically, as Munakata's left arm was removed from his shoulder to take the phone Awashima was talking to with worried words Saruhiko couldn't hear. The fact that one arm remained was definitely the only thing keeping him from collapsing.

Most spells using siren's teeth had a side-effect on a person's hearing of one sort or another. Frightened as they both had been by the deafness, neither had considered that the caster might have been using them for something else – a guide for the matter he'd wished to transmogrify Misaki into.

It was probably just for a joke he'd used a siren, like he was poking fun at Saruhiko's… attraction to him, with this as well as with the cruel words he'd used time and time again.

He must have been laughing his head off the whole time.

_You won,_ thought Saruhiko, smile coming onto his face whether he wanted it there or not. _You really, completely won._

_I was never going to have been able to protect Misaki._

Then Munakata said, "We'll be right there. Do not engage the angel. Stay on the move and do what you can to conceal yourself."

Saruhiko blinked. Munakata handed the phone back to Awashima and gave Suoh an intense look.

"Iwafune has already realised what we just did. JUNGLE has Yata Misaki."

That.

That was it. He was going to be sick. He was going to pass out.

He was going to go mad.

And then Suoh reached out and flicked a fiery spark into his face, making him jump back against Munakata's arm in shock.

"Oi," said the angel, standing up from the bar and stubbing his cigarette out on his own jeans. "Stay awake. Where are we on finding the location of JUNGLE's base, Izumo?"

Reaching up to touch the skin where the spark had hit him – a drop of energy not even powerful enough to leave a mark – Saruhiko had missed Izumo's reaction, and that of everyone else in the bar when he replied,

"I'm sorry to say no closer than we were yesterday."

"That location will, unfortunately, likely not remain hidden for much longer," said Munakata. "If through Yata-san they are able to perform the transmogrification, there will almost certainly be a vast exchange of energy in the vicinity the likes of which even they cannot hide."

Awashima also stood up; straight like a soldier. "Then surely we must find it before then – by way of Iwafune who even now is still going after Doumyoji – "

And there was that. Doumyoji may have been an annoying little elf, but it was still fucked up that he couldn't catch a break.

"It was Yukari that captured Yata-san though, Awashima-kun," Munakata pointed out. "Which means Iwafune's presence is probably a trap."

That left a tense silence in the room. Saruhiko wracked his mind over trails of possible methods of locations he'd already dismissed, possible counter-traps he had no way of knowing would be any use and were therefore almost assuredly useless.

He couldn't think. Suoh's shot to the face had barely kept his sanity from slipping away in mere shock of what he'd been told, and though his heart lurched in terror at the idea of even thinking about what Munakata had announced, the words found their way into the core of his mind then and there.

JUNGLE had Misaki.

Misaki, who had been transmogrified by That Person, and who therefore held the answer to what those two had been searching for for over a millennia.

Those two, who would do anything to achieve their goals, even if it meant peeling Misaki apart layer by layer to understand how what had been done had been done.

Saruhiko could not hope to contend against them. Saruhiko couldn't hope to do anything at all but pray that Munakata, Suoh, Kokujoji and Weismann could do something about it, because Iwafune was King-level and Hisui Nagare could potentially destroy cities.

He could do nothing.

_Why,_ he thought desperately. _Why did I not see this!?_

"It's also our only hope," said Munakata, at length. Both hands were back on Saruhiko's shoulders, holding him firm and upright though the demon's eyes were locked with Suoh's. "With any luck Iwafune will not be expecting both of us – only me."

Suoh nodded and brushed his hands against his jacket.

"Let's get to work," he muttered.

Kusanagi began typing on his PDA. "I'll have the others convene at your place, Munakata-san," he said. "I'm sure you'll find a use for them."

Munakata bowed slightly. "I'm grateful. Awashima-kun, if you would co-ordinate their forces with ours and set up as we have previously discussed to keep the actions of the minor JUNGLE players to a minimum."

"Sir," said Awashima, with a bow of her own.

"Kamamoto, you go with her," said Kusanagi. "The others will listen to you."

"But – "

Kamamoto looked almost horrified by the thought, which Saruhiko didn't understand until Kusanagi said harshly,

"You can't help Yata at the level you're currently at, Kamamoto."

And it was somehow baffling to Saruhiko that that had been what had stayed Kamamoto. As if there was no way anyone but him could care for Misaki, however much Misaki had cared for them. As if Saruhiko was the only one allowed to love him, because he just hadn't been able to think outside of the two of them.

Munakata manoeuvred him so they were face to face, as Awashima and Kamamoto ran out of the door.

"I trust there's no point in asking you to go with them," he said – so out of place in the gentleness he'd put into those words.

Saruhiko clicked his tongue, his voice suddenly easy to find; thoughts suddenly clear enough.

"Surely you could just command me to, and I'd have to do it?" he pointed out.

The demon smiled. "Since we're dealing with your father's research it seems more to my advantage to have you at my side in case you're able to provide relevant information."

"What a lame excuse," Saruhiko told him.

The deep blue eyes in front of them turned momentarily mischievous, and then turned back to Suoh.

"If you and whoever you choose to accompany you would like to gather around, I shall transport us directly to the location in question."

Although he knew he shouldn't have been, Saruhiko still found room to be surprised that all three of the Nephilim formed part of their gathering, including the two useless at combat. Anna and Totsuka had their value though, as the former had only just proven, so he didn't say anything about it.

Kusanagi flung his apron to one side and came around the side of the bar to join them.

"Not to be a busybody, but you may want to have something prepared for as soon as we arrive. If it's a trap then I'd say Iwafune is probably expecting us."

Munakata looked at Suoh again.

"I'll prepare to form a barrier upon arrival," he said. "You know attacking Iwafune directly will probably be ineffectual at first attempt, so pick something that will destabilise the area outside his bubble, like we did at _that_ time."

Suoh snorted.

"I'll do what I want," he murmured.

Rolling his eyes, Saruhiko caught a glimpse of Munakata's smile becoming closer to a grin.

"You're quite terrible," he said.

Like vines, the snakes of blue lightning Saruhiko still shivered to see spread out from the demon's back and covered themselves in glass-like feathers. Once his wings were out he wrapped them easily around the six of them and then there was an odd sensation, like being pulled towards Munakata by hooks in his clothes, especially from his chest where he'd been stabbed that first night they'd met.

It had been just over two weeks. It felt like it had been a lifetime.

Saruhiko found himself shutting his eyes, maybe instinctually, while whatever spell Munakata used for this kind of thing took effect. He remembered how he'd looked, washed out of where he'd been like a watercolour the night of that meeting, then remembered he'd actually been hiding and watching the entire time – only interfering to make Saruhiko's wounds easier for him to heal, not to stop them.

He wondered about that, in that strangely long, quiet moment wherein the teleportation took effect. Whether the demon had done that in the hopes that things would turn out the way they did.

Not that Saruhiko would have cared, but he didn't think so. Munakata was… not like anyone he'd ever met, human, demon or otherwise, but he felt like he was beginning to understand him better – for all the demon's love of order and being orderly, he wasn't altogether too fond of conformity, probably because he himself was so different from anything else.

So it wasn't for obvious reasons that he did the things he did. And maybe Saruhiko was not only beginning to understand his reasoning, but beginning to appreciate it.

And maybe someone with his reasoning, just maybe, could be the kind of person who could…

The pulling sensation stopped and Saruhiko opened his eyes, catching a glimpse of an almost deserted street a slumped-over blue-coated shape was almost horizontal on before a sudden massive force pushed him and the others back.

No, that was wrong. Not _all_ the others.

"Get back!"

The force had come from Munakata, using the barrier he'd been preparing to blow them all fifteen metres or so away from him in all directions, all except Suoh whose molten wings abruptly shot out to the sides and pulled him up, with a second of delay and sudden spring like he'd only just managed to pull himself loose from something.

And he had. Even as they'd arrived a portal had opened up beneath Munakata, reacting to his arrival as though their enemies had had some possession of his that recognised him and set off that reaction.

The portal opened up stark white and silent – not to Hell.

To the Void.

Saruhiko was surprised after two seconds to comprehend this that the circle didn't expand and suck them all in, but it was being blocked by the spherical barrier Munakata had produced, and hung in the centre of, teeth grit with the force of keeping that barrier intact.

If the barrier were to have collapsed though, before the portal did, then Munakata would fall into the Void and in all likelihood be lost forever down there.

It probably meant Saruhiko really was _his,_ that when he realised this he was struck with so much horror.

Kusanagi got up first from where he'd been pushed over, running to Totsuka who'd hugged Anna to his middle to protect her and helping them both up, while Saruhiko climbed to his feet himself, legs shaking.

Across from the circle in the road, beyond what he now recognised as Doumyoji's prone and gasping form, a tall man in a long, dark grey coat stood smiling. His hair was greyer than one would have expected of a man the age he seemed, and yet his eyes looked far, far older than that. Saruhiko recognised him instantly as the second figure from the first prophetic dream he'd had since his repossession, and from his huge and vaguely raven-like wings that fanned out like smoke inside an invisible barrier, smaller plumes drifting off from here and there, knew exactly who he was.

Iwafune Tenkei.

He was holding one of Niki's books. One of Niki's books that were Saruhiko's. Saruhiko who was Munakata's.

And that was how they'd set up this portal to target him. How could Saruhiko have been stupid enough not to realise that might happen!?

"Shit," growled Suoh, swooping back and slamming on the ground. "Iwafune, you fuck."

The older angel's smile became more cheerful, his grey eyes less.

"I didn't expect you to arrive so soon, Mikoto-kun," he said. "I see age hasn't improved your manners any. But you're looking well, Reisi-kun. I'm sorry it had to come to this."

Munakata was bent over by this point, struggling as the barrier sunk slowly downwards, inch by inch.

"Clearly, Iwafune, you are not sorry enough that you will do anything to rectify it."

Iwafune's eyes turned straight towards Saruhiko. He looked back into them, and when he did he saw a kind of emptiness – not of emotion but of something more defined, like hope – that had him look straight to Suoh of all people for protection.

Suoh obliged, flexing his wings and blaring heat out into the nearby area. Iwafune bowed his head ruefully.

"We had hoped to have gained your aid for our endeavours, Fushimi-san," he said. "But I can tell Mikoto-kun will not allow that to happen. Oh well. We have Yata Misaki, so it should be all right."

Saruhiko's heart lurched. If he could be there to maybe find something more instructive in the books that had been stolen than what they'd gleaned so far, he might have increased their understanding to a point where they needn't have done anything too drastic to Misaki in order to find out.

But, as Iwafune had said, Suoh would never allow it. He didn't stop to think on how he knew that was so when Suoh shouldn't have given a shit about him, his mind raced and he quickly came upon the only viable alternative.

He was panicking though, when he fumbled around his coat pocket for the flash drive they'd brought for HOMRA's sake.

"Here!" he cried, finally retrieving it and throwing it at their enemy, who caught it with raised eyebrows. "That drive contains all the information we've managed to collect so far – "

"Fushimi!" shouted Kusanagi, aghast.

" – if you use that there may not be any need to hurt Misaki – or do you really want that guy," he flung his arm out towards Suoh, "or the Grand Gold Magus after you, trying to get him back!?"

Iwafune appraised the drive, and though Kusanagi ran towards him as though to get it back, Suoh stopped him.

"Well, we certainly don't mean any harm to the boy," said Iwafune. "Unlike some," he looked back to Munakata, "I don't shudder at the thought of transmogrification. Is it really right that something like that or any other triviality should be allowed to let the people of Hell torment those weaker than them?"

Then he turned to Suoh.

"Or should the people of Heaven have the final say over what can and can't be done by any creature ingenious enough to achieve it?"

Suoh seemed to burn hotter than Saruhiko had ever seen him do so before, eyes blazing with an anger as intense as Iwafune looked hopeless, for all he sounded calm when he said,

"Yeah, I forgot what a _genius_ you were. You going to keep giving us shit like that guy and I should be on your side just because our 'peoples' both have problems with us? When that was _because_ of you?"

Iwafune's smile faded. He took a deep breath and looked at Suoh seriously.

 "I never held the proverbial gun to anyone's head to make them treat you poorly, Mikoto-kun. There have been long nights I've sat at grieved for your fates, and for my hand in causing them – when in the end it was all for nothing." He sighed. "But what can I say? It wasn't a fraction of how long I sat and grieved for my son, over the past millennia."

"Keep your fucking grief," hissed Suoh.

It might have been more emotion than Saruhiko had ever heard from him.

Just then the road cracked, and the barrier Munakata was holding himself up in lurched down and to the side. Saruhiko found himself unable to think of anything to try and get him out – he knew, from his reluctant assistance to Niki during his own forays into manipulating Void-matter, that he could protect himself well enough to get in to the barrier, but getting Munakata out was the problem; Saruhiko didn't have a shield in his repertoire strong enough to conceal him from the portal that was keyed in to his physical form.

As that distracted Suoh, their enemy sighed and pulled out a strange weapon in the shape of a gun, strange because Saruhiko could not determine where its origins were by looking at it. All the same he tensed up and drew himself back.

"Iwafune…" Munakata managed to choke out. Saruhiko was surprised he'd been able to keep up his defence for so long.

"I really am sorry, Reisi," said Iwafune. "If not so much that I regret what I did, then at least in the sense that I never wished any harm on you." He sighed again. "But I know you'll never stop trying to destroy me or my son."

"Your son… destroyed himself before I was even born."

"You think I don't know that!" yelled Iwafune, raising the gun, pointing it straight at the barrier keeping Munakata from falling into the Void.

_No, he can't_ , Saruhiko thought desperately, preparing to run like he could somehow catch the demon before he reached that thing. _He can't!_

Iwafune continued, more restrained, "You think I don't know what happened, or that the Nagare I get back will never be the same as the one I lost!? But at least some part of him will be, Reisi; at least he'll have a chance to be a whole person again, and for that… for that I would let all seven realms go to the proverbial Hell."

"Iwafune," growled Suoh.

"Mikoto!" Totsuka yelled, "The javelin – !"

BANG!

The gun fired.

The barrier shattered.

…

…

…

…

As Munakata fell, even then looking beautiful, like something from a tragic painting, Saruhiko felt himself falling too, and was reminded so clearly of his second dream, the one of the spider spinning in the web, that for a moment he wondered if he was dreaming still.

That moment sustained his fragile state of mind, while Suoh lashed out with an attack of his own.

But his attack did not strike, nor was it even aimed at, their enemy. Instead, a coil of scarlet red flames shot out much like the 'javelin' which Totsuka had so suddenly decided to remind Suoh of, and these flames became unnaturally solid as they formed, then pierced right through the left of Munakata's wings, blazing out the other side in a line that ran heavily from Suoh to well beyond the other end of the portal.

This 'javelin' of fire slammed into the ground over the circle, and through Munakata's wing as he shrieked in a pain Saruhiko almost thought he felt too: but, with the length through a part of him, he ended up hanging over the drop into the Void, dangling from the one, pierced wing.

The javelin sizzled there, red hot, but whatever it was it was not bent in by the pull of the Void, and while it left both Suoh and Munakata panting for breath, neither of them had fallen in.

Iwafune observed all this, first with surprise and then resigned he shook his head.

"Well now, I don't think I can touch that," he said, looking from the javelin to Suoh. "But if you leave now, Mikoto-kun, that thing will dissolve in minutes and take Reisi-kun with it."

He paused, as everyone saw the truth in that.

"I promise you both, we won't hurt the boy unduly."

And with that, Iwafune vanished by collapsing into a shroud of smoke and fog just like his wings, which soon dispersed into nothingness.

There was no comfort to be had in those parting words. He'd proven quite clearly what he considered 'due' when it came to saving his beloved freak son. If the drive Saruhiko had given him didn't have anything that would help Misaki, or worse – had something that would make them hurt him all the more…

But Saruhiko was soon distracted watching Suoh attempt to approach the portal. The fire from him own wings suddenly shot out towards it, and in surprise he hurried backwards.

"Oi!" he called out to Munakata, "Oi, demon – can you pull yourself up at all?"

That wasn't going to work. Saruhiko was amazed the 'javelin' hadn't burned right through Munakata's wing in a few seconds, and in fact didn't look to be burning through it at all. Munakata was still putting his efforts into keeping the portal from getting wider, and from tearing him from his suspended wing.

Suspended like a struggling spider from a thread.

How had that dream ended again? There'd been a definite sense within it that Saruhiko could save the spider, even if it cost him dearly – the spider about to eat him, but how…

And then, with Suoh's wings blazing and burning like they had been on that night just over two weeks ago, he remembered his own throat forced to cry out the words –

_"How delicious, this soul I'm eating every part of!"_

Right then, he knew exactly what to do.

But this time, there was no twist in his heart the way there'd been when he'd seen those siren's teeth lying out on the table before That Man. There was no sense that nothing else mattered, no feeling of his mind whiting out while he prepared his counter-attack like the puppet of his own bitterness.

No, now everything was coming into focus.

It was actually what he'd call a good feeling.

Saruhiko marched himself over towards Suoh with surprisingly stronger legs than he thought he'd ever felt before, and told him,

"Kusanagi can follow the trail that guy left back to his own lair. You need to get there and stop them before they hurt Misaki."

Suoh's eyes widened, and immediately he looked to Munakata, where Saruhiko followed his gaze and then met his eyes again.

"I can handle this," he insisted.

They stared into each other's eyes for a long time. Saruhiko wasn't scared because he knew, _he knew_ what had to happen here, and he knew that if Suoh could see that, he'd agree.

Thus, Suoh's eventual nod was not a surprise.

"Izumo," he said, and jerked his head off towards the spot Iwafune had been standing in before he'd disappeared. Saruhiko was surprised that Kusanagi didn't make any protest, and hurried right past, Totsuka and Anna following close behind.

Anna stopped suddenly in front of him and took hold of his coat.

"Saruhiko," she said, staring up at him.

She must have known. Maybe she didn't know what she knew, but she must have known. He said nothing and removed her hand from his coat gently.

Still, even as Kusanagi hurried to complete the spell, Suoh hesitated and edged closer to Munakata again with a frown. The demon was holding steady, for now, but looked up when he saw the outer flames from Suoh's wings begin to drift back towards the vacuum and forced his head up to look at him.

Saruhiko noticed his glasses had been knocked off. It made him look different, in a way he hadn't done even when they'd been having sex. He'd kept them on then, perhaps to keep his eyes from looking as human as they did now.

"Go," he said to Suoh hoarsely. "I have full faith in Fushimi-kun, and your responsibility is to your man."

Suoh appeared unimpressed. "Ch. Even now you can't stop going on about responsibility. Bastard. Don't you think I have any to you?"

A sad smile graced the demon's face.

"I thought…" there were now pauses in his speech where the strain became too much. "… you were happy… to have nothing at all to do with me… Suoh."

"Sure, _Reisi_ ," said Suoh – that last utterance of the demon's personal name pointed, like he was fed up of some game they'd been playing all along. "But even then…

…

… you're still my twin."

Kusanagi looked up sharply. Saruhiko didn't understand what that could mean.

Munakata looked even sadder when he replied,

"Am I?"

And Suoh simply said, "You are."

Then he turned back to the others and no more was said until Kusanagi had completed the door that would, if there was a shred of goodness in the whole fucked up universe, lead them to where those fucks were keeping Misaki.

Saruhiko had to wait for them to go.

It wouldn't have done for them to see what he was about to do.

 

 

*~*~*

 


	13. The Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, everyone was left hanging with that last chapter (and I didn't help by taking so long to write the next one...). Will Munakata be saved from the Void? Will Fushimi be able to save him without paying a terrible price? What is the secret past between Munakata and Suoh and how can they be twins? The answers are...
> 
> Not in this chapter at all! Instead, witness the return of everyone's absolute FAVOURITE character, as they swiftly end up inside another person's body. Oh yeah, I went for /that/ low-hanging fruit...

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

 

Yata cracked his eyes open to find there was a green bird sitting on his chest.

"… huh?" he said, and sat up.

Or tried to. His body wouldn't cooperate with his will.

"What the hell…?"

The bird cocked its head in a curious kind of way. Yata tried to move himself enough that the creature would be motivated to vacate his chest, and found that while he could shift himself from side to side a few inches he couldn't do more than that with only his physical body, and either way the bird didn't seem to care.

As he struggled his eyes took in the room around him. Massive. A huge, dark empty space like an underground parking lot for aircraft carriers, with only what looked like a showroom-style example living-room a few metres off to the side where some kid was playing a video game at a small TV.

"Hey!" he yelled, pulling harder at… there weren't any physical bonds, he had to be under a spell. "What the fuck is going on, who are you!?"

Not in the least startled, Misaki saw the reflection of the kid in the television screen roll his eyes. He didn't put the controller down, only muttered,

"Took him long enough," and kept playing.

"What!?" Yata shouted.

He struggled again, and harder, but to no avail. As soon as one violent pull against his restraints had him move enough to pull something in his ankle he quickly realised he hadn't wanted to, he grit his teeth against the pain and stopped to actually think about his situation.

The most important thing was to remember to do HOMRA proud, he told himself, so panicking was out of the question. Anyway, he seemed all right for the time being, just trapped. Now, what was the last thing he remember –

Damn it, the faerie! He and Yata had just brought down that JUNGLE punk, making an okay team if Yata had had to say so, but then that weird moment had happened where the guy… what was his name, Doumyoji?... anyway, he'd suddenly been convinced that Yata of all people was a hybrid, and then that guy had shown up.

That guy… he must have used some spell. If Yata remembered correctly he was a half-demon, so maybe he had been the hybrid Doumyoji had sensed, but where was Doumyoji? He looked from side to side again but saw nothing but the seemingly endless room disappearing into darkness and the weird mundane front room floating in that dark.

Well, that and the bird.

"Hey, what did you do with that other guy I was with!?"

The fair-haired boy at the game console scowled. "What guy?"

He still wasn't bothered enough to turn around, but his question grabbed the bird's attention, and it answered. "I believe Yata-san is referring to the minion of the demon my father intended to use as bait to trap him."

Yata blinked. Oh, he'd seen things a hell of a lot weirder than a talking bird in his time, but in these circumstances the whole thing was just surreal.

And what was that it had just said about bait?

"Huh!?"

"Are 'huh' and 'what' all you know how to say?" sneered the kid.

Before Yata could react with an angry outburst, the bird smoothly interjected, "It's understandable that his primary emotion right now is confusion, Sukuna. He's been unknowingly a pawn in more than one person's game."

That had been something Yata _had_ figured out – and he had a pretty good idea of who at least some of those people were. What he didn't know was what the game they were playing with him was, and it took a lot of effort not to release his frustration at the weird bird, who was still standing on him as it happened.

"Allow me to alleviate a little of that confusion, Yata Misaki – my name is Hisui Nagare. I believe you have been acquainted with the name."

Hisui Nagare. So this was the guy who was behind all the trouble JUNGLE had been causing, and an old enemy of Mikoto-san. Yata didn't have to have it pointed out to him to know whatever had been between him and this guy, or this guy's father acting on his behalf, had been something that still haunted Mikoto-san to this day.

For his sake he strived to put on a brave face, even remembering what Kusanagi had said about this guy maybe being able to blow up the city. His heart that had been hammering away before now felt like it was being squeezed, and a million messy thoughts were attacking him.

But Hisui had left him one opening to show what a HOMRA clansman was made of.

"Hah!" he laughed, just about able not to choke on the sound. "You mean you're the one everyone's worried about? You're nothing but a stupid-looking bird! You'd better prepare yourself, because Mikoto-san will fry you up in the blink of an eye when he gets here!"

The bird blinked.

"What an idiot," said the kid.

"Fuck off, brat!" Yata snapped at him. "Who the hell are you, anyway? Aren't you a little young to be throwing your lot in with a bunch of evil angels!?"

That finally grabbed the kid's attention away from his controller, which he slammed down on the floor of the weird room within the room before standing up with an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

"Oh, here it comes!" he yelled back. "Already the older one is jealous because someone younger than him is good enough to get onto Nagare's team, when he's just a loser!" he snorted. "Did you really have to team up with another warlock just to take down one of the parasite hosts? Ha! You really suck!"

"Well," said the bird, again interrupting before Yata could fly off the handle like he so desperately wanted to, "He's not in his peak condition; running off magical energy the way he has been he must not have slept or eaten in days. But that's a boon for us, since we were going on readings that had been taken fighting you at your best when we designed the bonds that are holding you, Yata-san."

Yata glared.

"What the fuck do you even want from me?" he spat, then thought quickly back over what he'd heard so far and added, "Setting a trap for Mikoto-san with me as bait? Tch! Doesn't matter how strong the bonds you've prepared for him are, he'll burn right through them in a few seconds. Your plan's going to fail miserably."

"Wow, you really are stupid," said the kid – 'Sukuna', Hisui had called him but Yata didn't know if it was worth remembering the name and was leaning towards no. "Iwafune-san is out there now making sure your dumb angel and that freak demon stay _away_ from here while he gets your pal Fushimi Saruhiko to join us." Sukuna then scowled again. "Though I don't know why we'd need him – I can figure this whole thing out in no time at all now we have you."

"What?" asked Yata. Even as he did so he knew he was inviting the brat to call him an idiot again for not understanding, but he couldn't help it, he didn't understand!

Did he mean that Yata was bait for Saruhiko? But why would he say that they didn't even need Saruhiko then, only Yata? What the hell did Yata have to do with any of this? He was only there because these assholes had picked a fight with Mikoto-san!

This outburst, however, was ignored, and Hisui explained to Sukuna instead.

"I'm sure you could, but time is of the essence while we still don't know what Kokujoji and Weismann might be planning."

Suddenly, the bird stilled, then lifted its head up and looked into the blackness away from the room.

"Unless your efforts to find your little brother have paid off, Yukari-kun?"

A few moments later Yata heard footsteps, expensive-sounding boots echoing off the huge space that must have been within a barrier of some kind, Yata thought. Soon enough the half-demon he'd had that glimpse of right after he and Doumyoji had taken out that emo guy appeared out of the shadows, smiling an annoyingly serene smile. But then, everything about this guy was annoying as far as Yata could see.

Especially the way his eyes didn't match that smile.

"Sadly, my beloved continues to elude me," he sighed. "And the old man failed to retrieve Fushimi Saruhiko."

_Ha!_ , thought Yata, and grinned at the bird. Not having a facial expression meant Yata couldn't really discern Hisui's reaction, though he didn't sound too concerned when he gently teased,

"Don't tell me you're losing your touch, Father."

Another chuckle filled the room coming from above, and Yata felt his distinct helplessness more sharply for a moment when the angel descended in a shroud of smoke-like wings. They spread out thin and dissipated into the air in moments as soon as he landed.

"Ah, forgive me, Nagare," said the newcomer – an older-looking man in a charcoal grey overcoat. "I managed to trap Munakata-kun as we'd planned… but just as we hadn't planned, Suoh Mikoto showed up with him."

"And I bet you ran back here with your tail between your legs at the sight of him, right?!" Yata yelled out.

He was finding himself far more afraid than he would have liked to think he – the clansman of an awesome angel – would act in this kind of situation. However, this guy – Iwafune Tenkei, he was guessing – 's mere mention of the name started the fire inside him again.

Mikoto-san was more than just an angel. Meeting other angels like that prick Eloaios and now this son-of-a-bitch (or of no one, rather, given what Kusanagi had told him about all that weird angel-cocoon stuff), and even that one time Totsuka's father had stopped round had taught him that Mikoto-san was special. Kusanagi had said the difference was Mikoto-san being an Angel of Chaos, and King-level, but to Yata there had always been the thought that it was more even than that.

Mikoto-san was… well, he was beyond the words of someone like Yata, that was the long and short of it. Every time he tried to put it into words when he was talking with the others or… or with Saruhiko, he'd end up stuttering and laughed at. Not in a mean way or anything, unless it was Saruhiko, but it just went to show… well. He supposed Saruhiko didn't really count as one of the 'others' now, only as 'Saruhiko', and who that was was also beyond Yata at present.

What could he say, about either of them? How Mikoto-san had shown almost no outward reaction to finding Saruhiko under possession of that Fox bastard on the roof like that, how he'd defied even Kusanagi's expectations with his calm but intense resolve to find Saruhiko even in Hell and save him… how did you put words to that?

Or to the look on Saruhiko's face as he'd burned himself the way he had. Saruhiko, with his stupid secrets and his sneers and his spells. Saruhiko who would make fun of Yata for what he felt but wouldn't even try to explain his own feelings.

Though he'd say this for him – if there was anything other than being indescribable that Saruhiko and Mikoto-san had in common, it was that he considered it equally likely either of them would show up to kick these guys' asses at any moment.

Meanwhile, Iwafune just chuckled again and ran his fingers through his longish hair.

"I'm afraid that's pretty much exactly what happened," he admitted jovially. "Though I can at least be pretty sure he won't follow me here, unless he wants Munakata to fall into the Void."

"Oh?" asked Hisui.

To Yata's relief he finally flapped his way off him and onto Iwafune's shoulder. The angel smiled.

"The poor fellow is as we speak suspended by a fiery javelin through his wing, keeping him from falling into the portal. Mikoto-kun is responsible for keeping the javelin intact, so he won't be able to leave. I know he and his… well, I don't know that they could rightly be called 'twins', but I know they care about each other. Mikoto-kun won't let him fall."

Something dark was in in the angel's eyes there; not like anger but more like sadness, and yet not so simple. Yata couldn't analyse it, not anything of the substance of what he'd said, which threw up about a zillion other questions, before Iwafune suddenly brightened.

"And we have this."

He held up a flash drive before tossing it to the brat, who caught it with a curious expression.

"What is it?"

"A present from Fushimi Saruhiko, in lieu of his presence." Iwafune snorted. "Somehow he seemed to think we might plan on doing some very uncomfortable things to Yata-san here without access to the knowledge in his father's books, so he gave it to us – the information he and Munakata retrieved from the books they analysed."

Saruhiko had done what!?

The two main points there, that Saruhiko had given such a boon to their enemies and yet that he had done it out of concern for Yata caused such conflicting anger and hope that for a moment Yata didn't know what he was feeling.

But Sukuna's face definitely lit up, and he summoned a PDA to fly across the room from where it had been lying on the faux-kitchen counter, eagerly inserting the drive into the side.

"I modified that ' _Librumscit_ ' spell you showed me, Iwafune-san," Sukuna told them, sitting himself on the edge of the showroom-room so that his shoes skimmed the black floor as he swung them back and forth. "I'll be able to absorb everything in the drive in a minute or two, just you watch!"

"Clever boy," laughed Yukari, stepping forward to ruffle the top of his head. "We might make a living human of Nagare-chan by the end of the day. Although…"

He smiled cruelly.

"Does this mean we don't need Yata-san after all?"

Yata clenched his fists. If they killed him before the others arrived then he definitely wasn't going to give them any satisfaction in it. Mikoto-san would repay them for it in kind soon enough and if what they'd just said was true, Saruhiko may even have helped.

"Oh, but I did promise we wouldn't hurt the boy unduly." Iwafune cocked his head. "Say, does Yata-san actually understand why he's here yet?"

Sukuna snickered in the midst of signing some symbols over his tablet. Yata's heart sank.

He still hadn't figured that one out. The only thing that stuck out in his mind was the weird conversation he'd had with Doumyoji before he'd been captured.

Because he wasn't a hybrid.

He couldn't have been. And even though that was the point he should have finally demanded an answer, something stalled him.

_"I know something you don't know…"_

"I'm getting it," Sukuna then cried, with a laugh that made Yata yet more uncomfortable, even as it interrupted the heart-thrumming thoughts that were already assaulting him. "I'm getting it – Nagare, I understand those symbols in the second book we had now – the five-pointed star! We need to open a door to every realm except the two we're taking from in the transmogrification!"

Yukari jumped onto the floor of the showroom and headed straight for the kitchen cabinet. "I think we can take care of that," he said. "One door to Hell, the Otherworld, the Nursery, Hades and the Void, on their way!"

"You take care of Hell and the Void, Yukari-kun," said Iwafune, forgetting whatever he had been about to say to Yata about why they wanted him in abrupt excitement. "I'll set up the Otherworld and Hades. Nagare, you can handle the Nursery?"

The bird flew onto the counter.

"That much shouldn't be too difficult," he said.

Worried at this sudden flurry of activity, Yata cried out, "Hey, wait – aren't you going to read the whole thing through and make sure it's right before you go doing anything crazy!?"

Contrary to his expectations his four foes actually did pause there, or three of them did anyway, Sukuna was much too excited. Iwafune and Yukari exchanged a look with the latter seeming to ask the former for direction and the former seeming blank in return, but Hisui spoke and his word was final.

"We have no time," he announced. "Kokujoji and Weismann could be on us at any moment, and we can't underestimate them."

"Nagare!" shouted Sukuna. "Nagare we'll have a use for that idiot after all! This spell is going to require a lot of excess energy to transform you, and we'll need the matter from the Maleboge-parasites as a reference guide!"

Yata felt himself blanch.

"Wha-wait, how much energy are we talking about?"

"For someone as weak as you?" Sukuna sneered. "All of it."

There was a long pause. Yukari raised his eyebrows and Iwafune just sighed.

"All right," he said. "Let's prepare what needs to be done."

"Yes!" cried the brat, jumping up to his feet and running towards Yata. "We're going to do transmogrification! Finally!"

Hard-pressed to figure out how the kid could act like he was getting a new video-game rather than killing a person, Yata was by now too pissed off with these assholes to show any fear that that person was going to be him. With any luck he'd used up too much energy already in his near-three-day hunt for a parasite and the spell would fail.

Even so though…

Well. Apart from anything else he hadn't called his mom since before the incident on the roof.

BOOM.

All present looked up.

"What was that?" asked Hisui, calmly.

A beat of delay and the room shook like the low-pitched massive impact they'd just heard had only just reached them. Yata's head went up an inch or so with the shock before clunking back down onto whatever table he was lying on. He made a noise, but the pain faded rapidly in the wake of anticipation.

BOOM.

This time the impact was felt almost immediately after the noise, though the two were still not in sync, and Sukuna cried out –

"It's the barrier! Someone is trying to—someone is breaking in!"

He looked furious, like it was a personal affront, and Yata guessed the barrier had been his doing.

"Ah," said Iwafune. "It seems I may have been mistaken on one account."

A warped, roaring sound underscored with a noise like falling shards of glass reverberated around the room as piercing as a foghorn, and with a third, tremendous shake the darkness around them collapsed: burned into so many ashes and revealing a still-huge but now comprehensible metal-walled space that Yata guessed was underground, judging by the several storey-high hole that had exploded out as if by force of the sun itself.

Mikoto-san descended to their floor far faster than a normal thing could fall, slamming into the iron beneath them and cracking the cement beneath that. His wings filled the entire space with heat, enough to create distortions and far wider than Yata had ever seen before. Sukuna even fell over with the shock.

The Nephilim did not take long to follow, and Kusanagi called out –

"What was that you said about us not following you, Iwafune-san?"

Yata grinned, called out "Mikoto-san!" and felt oddly like crying when he saw him approach.

"All right there, Yata-chan!?" Kusanagi called back to him, swooping in on his own wings and landing a touch more gracefully than the others. He was smiling like everything was going to be fine.

Accordingly, Yata laughed. "You don't think these assholes could trouble me, do you!?" he yelled, though he found it a little hard to keep his voice as strong as it should have been.

"Oh, well if you're not in any trouble…"

That banter was cut off swiftly by Iwafune's surprised and frankly almost worried objection –

"I'm shocked, Mikoto-kun. I didn't think you'd let poor Reisi get lost forever."

Mikoto-san only snorted, but there was no accompanying smirk Yata might ordinarily have expected to see: this was more like the intensity he'd seen Mikoto-san use against the Fox, yet not as calm. Fire crackled around his wings frenetically, giving Yata the impression that a great battle was about to begin, greater than anything he'd seen Mikoto-san attempt before.

"Sorry to worry you," he said sarcastically. "Fushimi's taking care of it."

"Fushimi-san is?" asked Iwafune. "I can't think of how he might do that, given his level."

The last syllable of his sentence coincided with the first of Yukari's ensuing laughter.

"Oh, _I_ can," he said, with a smile Yata found himself hating more than any other expression he'd seen on the bastard's face so far. "And it's most beautiful. But we have a spell to prepare, don't we, Iwafune-san? Can you hold this one off?"

Iwafune smiled back, and from his side he drew a weapon Yata had never seen before – a firearm of some sort: very rare for something like an angel to use and thus possibly not angelic in origin.

"I'll do my best," he assured the half-demon.

After that, everything was chaos.

Something that sounded like a gunshot blasted smoke throughout the entire space – or something that looked like smoke anyway: an extremely dense mist that smelled neither like smoke, nor mist, nor anything at all but had Yata's vision of Mikoto-san and the rest of the clan obscured entirely, while reducing what he could see of his enemies to shadows moving in the barrier.

This must have been the 'ultimate defence' Kusanagi had mentioned, and indeed, far more than just a smokescreen Yata could see the scarlet light of Mikoto-san's flames above him for only an instant before they were smothered.

But the red lights in the fog didn't stop there, and the temperature continued to rise. Seeing this as an opportunity Yata began to struggle again, mind racing to see if in his memories of Saruhiko's more complex, specialised spells he'd shown him in the past he could remember something that might help him now. With something like that, he might have been able to compensate for his lack of the raw power he'd usually use.

However, at the same time the movements of the JUNGLE followers hadn't ceased, and soon the unfortunately familiar sound of a wind that was almost like a chorus of screams whistled over his head. When Yata turned his head towards the sound he could just about make out the twinkling lights of the Alighieri Particles in a darker circle in the fog.

A doorway to Hell.

He cringed and struggled harder. No matter how hard he tried, all he could remember was tuning himself out as Saruhiko had gone over the details of this spell or that in order to focus of the results of the spell themselves – the one to open locked rooms, the one to shatter barriers with variations tailored for shields of different origins, the one that negated spells directed against the physical body – there were several that he might have been able to use if he'd only been listening to what Saruhiko had told him when he'd shown him how they worked!

And then, even in the situation he was in, he still froze for just a moment as the fleeting thought _'what else did I not listen to?'_ entered his head.

Some of the fault must have been with him somehow. It must have been. But if Saruhiko could have only said it plainly…

The noise of crickets chirping ended that moment. Yata had never had much contact with the Fifth world: what some called 'the Nursery', where life existed in strange and primitive forms, but he knew the sound of crickets heralded the opening of a door to that world, so Hisui must have had enough ability to do it.

Almost no time at all passed before he felt a change in air pressure coming from his right and saw some of the mist begin to swirl towards a white circle he could vaguely make out. The Void. They'd have had another barrier in place to keep everyone from getting sucked in, but Iwafune's mist seemed to be able to penetrate it because that's where a part of it was funnelling towards.

Hopefully that would help Mikoto-san somehow, rather than pull them all in; because of all seven dimensions out there, there was no question as to which was the most dreadful. He heard Kusanagi's voice yell, "Mikoto – they're opening portals, be careful!" just as above his head a fourth one spiralled into being, like a reflection of the world they lived in now through some colourful filter – the Otherworld.

And yet… not as Yata had ever seen it before.

No, all of a sudden there was a pull there, a pull like it was somewhere he belonged. And to feel such a thing in the midst of a battle of this magnitude, trapped and on the verge of being sacrificed to resurrect some dead Nephilim bastard… yet it was almost as if he could hear a gentle tune, calling him from beyond the threshold.

_What was going on!?_

"We're almost there, Iwafune-san, one more to go!"

Suddenly there was a cursed sword at his throat.

"If you're listening, Suoh Mikoto, I'd stop what you were doing!" Yukari called out. "That is if you don't want to see your precious follower's blood painted all over this room."

"Don't listen to him, Mikoto-san!" Yata shouted, ignoring the way the sword dug into his neck in retribution. "They're going to kill me anyway to complete the spell!"

He felt not a little bit proud of himself for managing to do that.

More so of Mikoto-san, who only let his next attack strike harder, shaking the space around them and sending the sound of twisting, warping metal crashing to the floor from the ceiling above them, and then a massive explosion shook the compound, making the mist seem to hum. Yata grinned as he heard Sukuna scream a little in the confusion.

But that was when the whisper of the Sixth world finally reached Yata's ears, completing the chain, or would have done if Sukuna hadn't still been screaming.

Abruptly, the mist between him and the ex-angel dissipated. Yata only just saw Iwafune turn around with a look of horror on his face and cry, "Sukuna-kun!?" when Yukari abruptly dropped the sword across Yata's neck and started screaming too.

Then Totsuka was at his side, a little singed but looking none the worse for wear. Yata barely had the time to say his name before his skin abruptly felt like a thousand knives were carving into it from the inside of his body, and then he was fighting not to join in the screaming of the others.

_What the fuck was going on!?_

"Yata? Yata-chan, can you hear me? Hold on!"

Can you hear me?

Saruhiko had written it on his tablet at _that time_ – strange enough as it was for that to come to mind. And he'd cried, " _Of course I can't, what the hell do you think I've been saying this whole time!?"_ and hadn't been able to hear his own voice.

How about now?

No.

Now?

No.

Can you hear me now?

No!

No matter what he'd done it hadn't worked. It hadn't worked and something had been really wrong, whatever he'd tried to tell himself he'd felt it deep within him like the real danger was hiding, and even after the hearing had come back the feeling hadn't gone away completely until Mikoto-san had made him feel like anything was possible.

That had been something he'd kept to himself though, what with Saruhiko's father dying so soon afterwards and…

Wait.

Had those two things happened so close together for a reason?

"Those marks!" as though from an echo in a cave he heard Totsuka cry. "Mikoto-san hurry! Oh, Yata-chan… what have they _done_ to you?"

_No_ , he thought again, even as he wondered what marks Totsuka was talking about. _No, you're wrong, they haven't had enough time to do anything to me yet, something else is_ –

"Father!" called Hisui, "Father, something's going wrong, shut it down!"

It was the first genuine emotion Yata had heard from the bird. But by this point he had lost the battle to stop himself from screaming, so that wasn't the foremost thing on his mind.

Keep it together, he tried to tell himself, desperately. Keep it together!

"Father, the spell is taking the energy from Yukari and Sukuna instead of the boy, you must shut it down!"

"That's impossible!" cried Iwafune. "We haven't even started the spell!"

Something like a rip sounded out and all of a sudden there were dozens of… things floating around in the air. Yata heard someone yell "Damn it, the parasites!" and jerked his head away as much as he could despite his pain when one of the objects floated over him; a translucent, shapeless disc with ruffling edges and bulging, moving black spots, the size of a beach-ball altogether.

This creature didn't seem interested in him though; one by one the spots burst and black, inky matter spilled out and dissipated while the silvery container continued floating above his head…

… towards the grey portal to Hades, straight ahead from him.

_What?_

Something was going very wrong. Yata saw Iwafune, after a moment's more hesitation, draw his gun-arm up to the portal to destroy it only for yet another barrier to buffet him back, sending him flying past the table Yata was lying on, though he landed on his feet.

"King, I don't know what this is but it doesn't look good!" Totsuka shouted. He'd being trying to grab Yata's hand this whole time but kept quickly snatching his away again, as though Yata's pain was communicated to him by his touch.

A fleeting glimpse was all Yata had of Mikoto-san, just as Anna reached him despite the flames that shot out of his back and grabbed the edge of his jacket, exclaiming –

"Mikoto! Mikoto, it's him!"

That portal to the Otherworld was still singing, and louder now.

Totsuka looked up frantically from where he'd been trying to do something, anything, to help Yata against a force he had literally no clue in regards to its nature. He and Yata both only knew it was hurting like hell, and yet Yata also knew, somehow… he should have known that nature.

_Stupid Misaki. Stupid, idiotic Misaki._

"Who, Anna!?" Totsuka called back. "Who is it!?"

Anna's whisper permeated every corner of the room, like its import made the rest silent for a moment.

"The bad man," she said.

Instinctively, Yata turned his head back to the portal to Hades, looking up into its dark cloud, as the parasites congregated into a cluster that spun like a windmill in front of it.

He could just about hear…

_"Hey there, Mi-sa-ki!"_

And then something shot out of the portal and into his head.

 

*~*~*

 

_His throat is dry._

_He sits in front of a TV playing a truly heart-warming tale of love, endurance and big boobs, and pours another shot in celebration._

_The siren's teeth are lying on the table where he puts the bottle down, glassy and smooth. Will the brat's look like that now, he wonders? Not until the sealing spell he'd also placed is removed, but the culmination of that gambit is a way off yet._

_Behind him the door opens._

_He grins._

_"Hey there, son!" he calls out. His heart is beating quicker because it's just so damn funny. "How's your boyfriend? Do they think he'll get his hearing back?"_

_The look on Saruhiko's face says it all really, and maybe more than he'd been expecting, but even that's not such a big deal._

_Of course at the end of the day, what is?_

 

*~*~*

 

Yata's awareness came back what seemed to him to be slowly, but then since so far as he could tell so much else was moving slowly too, that could have been him misinterpreting things. The pain was… well, if not gone it was different enough that he couldn't actually tell if he was feeling it or not, but since he found himself sitting up the spell that had paralysed him must have been broken.

_And then he was standing in a large room; ornate but in need of cleaning, painted over with symbols even Yata recognised as forbidden._

_And Saruhiko, younger than he was now, scowling, was lying on the floor before him – trapped the same way he had been._

_And in his hand there was a bottle of emerald green liquid._

_And he knelt down before Saruhiko and raised the bottle to his eyes…_

_What? No!_

With no warning that… vision ended and he was back in the room surrounded by portals on a table outside the showroom – now half blown away entirely, edges smouldering.

_Mikoto-san_ , he thought.

_"Is that who it is? Thanks for letting me know!"_

His head jerked up.

Who had just said that?!

Or had he been hearing things? A brief overview of the scene showed him everyone but Yukari and Sukuna still conscious, but no one looked like they'd spoken; Kusanagi and Anna stood by Mikoto-san's sides a few metres in front of him, Totsuka was right up close and had a comforting, questioning hand on his shoulder and Iwafune was breathing heavily on the floor, the bird on his shoulder.

But as far as he could tell no one had said anything.

Except someone had to have –

_He stood at the end of a table in a room he'd only seen once but felt so familiar to him at the same time it was like he'd lived there years. Saruhiko was there again, and younger even than before, younger than Yata had ever known him to be but it was him, and he panted like he was sick._

_Saruhiko? He wanted to say, but didn't, What's wrong?_

_Instead he found himself putting a platter with a silver cover in front of the too-young Saruhiko, and asking him, "Still hungry?"_

_He lifted the cover away._

_There was an enormous beetle crawling around the plate, prevented from going anywhere by a small barrier._

_Saruhiko looked absolutely terrified._

_"Bon appetite," he said._

_No, wait!_

Then he was back in the room again, and Totsuka leaned in towards him.

"Yata-chan? Are you okay? Does it still hurt?"

What was that he'd just seen? A vision? He'd never had one before, but it felt more like a memory, only it was a memory of something that had never happened; not to him at any rate and why should it have? Why should anyone have ever done such a cruel thing, and to Saruhiko of all people!?

"Yata-chan?"

He smiled.

"I'm just fine, ni-san," he said.

Then he put his hand on Totsuka's shoulder in turn, said a spell he'd never heard before and watched dumbly as some kind of… matter sprung out, twisted like a drill through Totsuka's shoulder and blasted him across the room where it embedded itself into the steel wall and pinned him there, wide-eyed.

"Oops," he said.

"Totsuka!"

Kusanagi veritably screamed out, and Yata waited for this vision too to disappear and leave him sitting back on the table again, only it didn't, and when Mikoto-san took two steps towards him he lifted up one index finger and wagged it with an accompanying tongue-click.

"Ah, ah, ah," he said silkily. "I don't think you want anything to happen to dear Misaki now, do you, _Mikoto-san_?"

He slid himself off the table and dusted his hands off on his trousers.

Only…

… only he wasn't the one doing it. He wasn't doing anything.

Something was inside him, moving him, speaking from him… something that…

_Someone_ that…

"It can't be."

He turned his head and took a second to realised it hadn't been himself making the muscles move. Iwafune was staring at him, horrorstruck, but peering like he recognised only now what he was looking at as he exclaimed –

"Fu – Fushimi Niki!?"

Yata found himself laughing a laugh that wasn't his.

"Hey there," were the words his mouth said, "if it isn't the Dad of Year over there, ha! How've you been? Keep in mind, I couldn't keep track of time in the spirit world – "

"You monster!" Kusanagi's voice was like he'd never heard it before, as if he was on the verge of snapping as he surveyed the damage done to Totsuka's shoulder. "Give Yata back right now!"

A grin was his only answer, and then Yata turned away again.

_No_ , he thought. _No, what about Totsuka!? That wound looked serious – fuck, did I do that?! Why the fuck would I have done something like that!?_

_"Duuuuuuuuh…"_ said the terrible voice that struck him as chillingly familiar as it echoed in his head, mocking him. _"Sorry, Misaki, if you haven't figured that one out yet we're going to have to wait a lot longer 'til I have enough space to explain things with only one-syllable words."_

_But what about Totsuka!?_ he thought angrily.

_Then he was lying in a hospital bed, and Saruhiko was looking down at him with the look he'd only seen when he'd seen him staring at his father's body._

_And he was saying –_

_"If you were going to give it up for one of Them, you could have at least got more in return than the safety of a loudmouthed shrimp."_

"This is impossible," Iwafune hissed, back in the room, climbing to his feet unsteadily, wings unfolding in their smoke-like way. "A spirit can only speak through a living human under special circumstances – they can't use magic through them!"

Yata's hands clapped slowly and just as mockingly, grin pulling the sides of his mouth unnaturally wide.

"Well done, Mr. Ex-angel, that is how spirits work; but you see – I'm not a spirit anymore. It's a little spell I like to call… " he tapped his hands rapidly against his legs with a stupid noise that sounded like a parody of a drumroll before smacking them together suddenly. "… Cross-dimensional transmogrification!" He snorted. "Aren't you happy that it works?"

Iwafune's eyes just kept getting wider, face falling further and further like Yata's heart did, trapped inside a body that was no longer his but a person who had…

Then _that_ was why…

"Oh wait, you were hoping to use it on Daddy's dearest over there, so you just went along and did what I said in my notebooks without asking a single question about it, huh? You even brought along the vessel I prepared so he'd be close to hand for me to possess; that's what I call being helpful!"

Yata noticed the bird's claws dig down deeper into Iwafune's shoulder, wondering if he'd have noticed it if he wasn't being possessed.

"Are we to understand," asked Hisui, sounding calm again, "that we have instead completed the necessary steps you'd started in order to turn yourself into a demon?"

And that was it in its purest form.

Saruhiko's dead dad, who he'd killed – not for power but to protect Misaki! Fuck, how the hell had this happened without him knowing about it! – had tricked JUNGLE into turning him from a spirit into a demon with transmogrification, and now he was possessing Yata.

Also he'd turned Yata into a hybrid or something, but who cared about that? What the hell had this bastard done to Saruhiko!? Those visions – memories rather – with the green bottle and the beetle: had they been real!? Had he actually…

The demon laughed through him, and answered both Yata and Hisui.

"Hey, how'd you guess?"

He had. Fuck it, he _had_ , and he'd been doing it as long as Yata had known Saruhiko and longer, right under his nose – what – what… but he and Saruhiko were supposed to have been learning magic to deal with things like that, the fucker couldn't have been _that_ super-powerful! Not so much so that _together_ they couldn't have handled it!

Or maybe, since he'd turned himself into a fucking demon, he could have. The implications of everything were hitting him in endless waves, one after the other, and if he thought that these last few days had been the worst he could ever have possibly felt he'd been dead wrong.

Nothing compared to the guilt.

Not the guilt, that is, of being the whole reason Saruhiko had sold his soul to a demon because he was too fucking stupid to have realised that Saruhiko's dad was a fucking psycho using forbidden magic on the both of them.

But the guilt of being glad, because it proved Saruhiko cared about him after all.

_"Aww,"_ said the evil fuck inside his head, listening to his thoughts. _"If it isn't True Love. Too bad my beloved monkey is being_ loved _in a different way now, by his demonic overlord. Don't worry, if you don't understand that I can explain it to you too later."_

Yata ignored the taunting, tried to clench his fists and failed and fighting against his frozen jaw had to grit the word out in his mind –

_"Why!?"_

_"Wow, you really are adorably dumb, Mi-sa-ki,"_ Niki crooned, and that echo of Sukuna's earlier words to him gnawed on the last thread of Yata's patience, along with the continued use of his first name.

But he had no chance to reach that furious culmination, as the demon elaborated –

_"As his father, I couldn't let Saruhiko's soul belong to some gay demon for the rest of eternity. And now I'm a demon, I can repossess it!"_

Yata could feel the man grinning madly behind his own face.

_"Then Saruhiko will belong to_ me _for all eternity instead."_

 

 

*~*~*

 

 


	14. The Twins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, it's me - here to tell you that unfortunately this is the last chapter (of this or Nautilus, for those of you following that one) until December due to NaNoWriMo.
> 
> Even more unfortunately, there's another chapter below these words. Within it, there's a title-drop, a 'little death', I re-use innuendos from these notes, and the secret past of Suoh and Munakata is revealed through flashback. Basically, they used to snark at each other a lot. It might be hard to find the story under all that snark, in fact...
> 
> Enjoy! (you probably won't >;)

 

*~*~*

 

 

 

The flames crackled.

Saruhiko had only minutes; three at most to play his trick without Suoh there to keep his javelin intact, so there was no time for regrets or second thoughts; he took a brief measure to protect himself from being burnt by the angel's fire and headed towards the point where it broke out through the barrier, standing astride it right before the demon's shield and the portal to the Void beneath that bubble.

Munakata was panting heavily to keep the shield from dropping him in with the length of solid fire through his wing, but he looked up when he saw Saruhiko.

Since he didn't say anything for a moment, and Saruhiko saw the end of the javelin nearest him beginning to dissolve into regular fire already, he knew he had to be the one to say it.

"You're going to have to let me in, Captain," he said. "Only I can provide a shield for you from the portal."

The evident surprise of the demon's face was as much a surprise to Saruhiko – to think he hadn't guessed, or if he had, perhaps, and not thought Saruhiko would go so far for the sake of…

Well. He could have just ordered him to do it, and it wasn't like Saruhiko could have disobeyed. What else was the point of having a human slave?

"Are you sure?" Munakata asked him, eyes piercing through him through uncharacteristically mussed locks of dark hair.

Those eyes hardly looked like there was anything wrong with him at all though, the annoying bastard. Saruhiko grinned.

"Nope. But let's do it anyway."

To the demon's credit, he didn't hesitate after that, nodding once and raising his right hand with two fingers pointed to direct his power – or rather the retraction of it.

"Very well."

With a sound like rain the barrier weakened where Saruhiko stood in front of it, unfixed objects all around them beginning to gravitate towards the new weak spot. Saruhiko's coat flapped harshly enough that he was almost worried for a moment it would drag him down into the portal, before he told himself to stop being an idiot.

That Man had spent little enough time on Saruhiko's education, but that little – hate it far more than being ignored as he had – had included interacting with the Void. Niki had loved the idea of the Void, and throwing Saruhiko's possessions into it to watch the look on his face. No one had ever believed him though, since no one was insane enough to open up a portal to the Void and potentially kill countless passers-by just to play a cruel trick on a child.

That creepy Saruhiko, always telling lies.

But the joke was on Niki. His teachings were actually going to come in use, as Saruhiko prepared to enter the shield crawling on the javelin, and without them he might have been killed before he could be killed in the way that was actually going to be useful.

And he would be. But there were more important things than that.

Preparing for the Void was simple enough, in theory. One merely had to anchor oneself to a fixed object that would be protected by the shield one had (presumably) put into place to stop the portal from becoming a tiny black hole. Not that a portal this size could have done something like sucked the whole world in before it collapsed in on itself due to lack of power, but Saruhiko couldn't have said as much for the whole street.

The problem here was Munakata's shield had been thrown up on instinct, and was not the correct type to let the anchor's 'chain' as it were, pass through – unless the shield was weakened as Munakata was trying to do, in which case it would no longer provide the shielding necessary to not simply pull whichever object from its fixings and suck that into the Void too.

Under such dire time constraints, Saruhiko's only option was to anchor himself to the javelin, which apparently had some anti-Void properties that was keeping it from folding into the hole, but was also going to disappear in a couple of minutes. And was made of an Angel of Chaos' fire.

As for the first thing, this wouldn't take that long anyway. As for the second, well, he had no choice.

So with a deep breath he wove the spell, keeping his gaze on the demon as though it would somehow make him do it without mistake. If he made a mistake, they were both dead, but Munakata made no mention of such a thing, only waited with deep breaths for Saruhiko to take the first step.

The words that spun his anchor came out perfectly. Saruhiko realised, in the back of his mind, that he wanted them to not only because the situation was so important, but also because he wanted to show Munakata he could do such a complex spell. That a part of him wanted to impress him.

Made of a strange material Saruhiko fortunately had prior access to from a pocket dimension Niki had used before, a heavy, dense rubber from the fifth world infused with a vacuum core, the anchor wrapped around his arms then pierced into the javelin – there was a little strangeness with the connection, the fire not the preferred kind of object for this purpose, but Saruhiko soon realised the heat had welded, of a sort, the anchor to the javelin.

He crawled forward, beyond the barrier.

A high-pitched whine in his ears told him the air-pressure was going down – the shield being the only reason there was any air at all. Most sound came from the rushing of dust and wind into the bubble from behind him. The heat of the fire was muted a little, but he could feel it still beneath the fabric on his knees and even more against the skin of his hands, enough to probably give him mild burns, which was probably about number four hundred on his list of concerns.

Then, with another few movements, trembling because he knew what was coming and he wasn't that eager for the consequences – perhaps as less-than-eager as he could remember – he was fully within the shield, facing his wounded overlord over the Void.

Caught, as it were, between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

Whether he'd have called the beat that followed a hesitation, he didn't know. Maybe it was more of a 'confirmation', just between their eyes, that this was what was going to happen.

Behind him the javelin shook, so they both knew it was now or never. One more beat of confirmation, and the demon's other wing moved.

That long and elegant wing that cut through the thinning air like a blade, stretching across the hole in the world towards him. Clear feathers, like solid leaves of water fell down from the other wing, their lightning spines fading as soon as they detached before they fell apart. And he refused to maybe have the demon think that he was having second thoughts, so he forced himself to reach back out for it.

They felt cool, and soothing to the touch, but with a little feedback almost like the tongue on his skin had felt –

And with that contact, he saw the blue jigsaw line along his hand just before Munakata came into him.

 

*~*~*

 

_The second night after the incident at the tower, when Saruhiko has his final dream, is preceded by Munakata's insistence that they break from the research for a rest period._

_He watches while the demon puts his puzzle together._

_"Don't those little bubbles of order burst at random too?"_

_Munakata gives him yet another smile._

_"Occasionally," he says._

_He then leans forward, conspiratorially._

_"So it's a good thing we're not in Hell right now, no?"_

_Saruhiko rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't say it was top of the list of reasons I'm glad that's the case."_

_He says, and yet he immediately wonders if he means it, because in Hell there isn't much that could touch him while he was under Munakata's protection, unless Munakata was suddenly not there._

_And he assumes one day he'll see Hell for himself with his demon master – he belongs to Munakata forever and even if it takes a thousand years Munakata will go back there one day. Of course unless some kind of forbidden magic is used, Saruhiko will have died himself by then, and being Damned be sent directly there._

_Munakata would go and collect him though._

_Wouldn't he?_

_The demon puts another piece of his puzzle down. Saruhiko shifts uncomfortably in his chair._

_"You still seem restless," Munakata observes. "Would you like to have sex again?"_

_There's the spitting-out-your-drink moment Saruhiko almost wishes he was drinking for that he's grown to know and endure. He won't be beaten though._

_"Sure, if you want."_

_"Excellent. I look forward to attending to matters we didn't get the chance to last time."_

_A brief thought back to 'last time' and Saruhiko knows what he's talking about._

_He grins. "Wouldn't you know a demon would try to get inside its human servant one way or another."_

_That remark causes a strange look to appear on the demon's face, one that almost has time to confuse Saruhiko before Munakata tells him –_

_"On the contrary, there is only one way that I am interested in entering you."_

_And that remark, in that low and otherworldly tone with those midnight eyes staring into his makes Saruhiko's heart beat faster. But._

_"Were I to possess you, under any circumstances, you would surely die. Capable as you are, you are a human, and I would not be able to hold back the raw energy that composes me from breaking your body." He taps a puzzle-piece against the side of the table thoughtfully. "I would do it only under extreme extenuating circumstances."_

_It's strange._

_Very strange. Saruhiko knows it's strange and figures he's as fucked up as he's always known he was, but maybe that's not a bad thing given the situation he cannot escape now._

_But the strange thing is… that addendum only serves to increase the build-up of excitement Saruhiko is feeling._

_And Munakata certainly doesn't seem to mind._

 

*~*~*

 

 

If Saruhiko had ever thought he'd felt his heart pounding in his chest before, he'd not known the meaning of the phrase. It was like a rock, banging from side to side so hard inside him that his body felt like it should be moving with it.

Munakata was not the Fox, was nothing like he had been. Saruhiko tried to take in breath after breath but no matter how hard he gasped he could not fill his lungs. He felt like light itself had taken up a residence inside his skin and was going to tear him apart. And he didn't know if he'd have said he was in agony or not, the sensations were far too intense for him to make realisations like how much he was feeling any one thing.

_"Fushimi-kun."_

And then…

Then he was breathing and his heart was beating normally.

The anchor had been activated; not by him, and pulled him back beyond the boundary of the shield, and even though he felt like he should have been flat on his back and screaming, he was standing up, and looking at the shield – the disorientation just from being upright as much a panic as the rest.

If you'd never been possessed by a King-level demon, and one as powerful as Munakata Reisi, you couldn't possibly understand the weight of the experience.

_"Fushimi-kun?"_

The voice came from inside his head, but it was nothing like the Fox. Indeed, he now saw the Fox had probably not been fully possessing him all those weeks ago, or else had a nature so different from Munakata's that he couldn't account for it. He didn't know if he could account for anything; he couldn't string a coherent thought together, even though that initial overwhelming wave was gone – because he knew it shouldn't have been, unless his senses were somehow being deceived.

He was watching someone else's experiences, like a dream. There was no sense of reality associated with this. He almost wondered if he'd finally cracked.

_"Saruhiko."_

_Pull yourself together_ , he ordered himself. He tried to breathe deeper to calm himself but found he couldn't breathe anything other than in a normal fashion despite his panic, and as this created a feeling like light-headedness inside him it was only then he realised that his body was only breathing at all because Munakata was making it do so.

Saruhiko's soul was also only still in the body with the demon because he willed it.

Metaphysically speaking – Saruhiko was dead.

He tried to make his lips move, to say the word, "Captain…" in supplication, but his will no longer had any effect on the body.

Nevertheless, through their bond and in the same space, Munakata seemed to hear his cry.

"Fushimi-kun. I'm going to collapse the portal now."

Now his lips were moving, voice emitting the words. An eerie sensation.

"May I borrow you a little longer?"

In their current state Munakata was going to need to ground himself to something to fight Hisui and Iwafune anyway. And it wasn't like Saruhiko had a choice, he thought, and would have laughed.

" _You're the boss_ ," he sent back, trying to make thought alone retain his usual sardonic tone.

Forthwith, the demon began to use his body to perform the task, and Saruhiko took that moment to think about the fact that he was dead.

There had been no other way. Or if there had there'd been no time to think of it. Only by shielding Munakata fully inside his body had he been able to break the portal's hold on him and set him free. And even though he'd survived the Fox's possession for some time, though it too would have been eventually fatal, Munakata was far more powerful, more so even than he'd thought. He couldn't even have survived if the demon had left as soon as they'd been safe – the shock of that would have killed him just as surely.

Accordingly, he realised, Munakata had to have deliberately killed him almost as soon as he'd possessed him to spare him the sensation of dying through demonic possession.

Absurd as it sounded, Saruhiko was… touched.

He felt his arms lifted up to perform the spell, and through them suddenly had the first notion of what it was like to do magic the way Munakata did; not effortlessly, as he'd always made it look, but without any special preparation to expend that effort he extended a secondary shield around the first to encompass the entire portal. The first, after all, had only been raised to stop the gap – this new one folded around it and then squeezed.

First the stop-gap shield popped like a bubble, the javelin breaking up and disintegrating into a fire that swirled into the portal – the last thing it consumed before it fell in upon itself and imploded, leaving a huge hole in the middle of the street, but no casualties.

Well, Saruhiko was almost sure he'd felt a few of the bones in his fingers snap, but being dead the feeling was kind of muted. Munakata straightened them out again soon enough.

It was fortunate that then a groan sounded from the street behind them, before an awkward silence could descend.

"Doumyoji-kun?"

Slowly hoisting himself up onto his elbows the half-faery didn't seem to hear the call of his name, head turning to scan the area with rapidly-blinking eyes until they were pointed at him – at them, rather.

It took another few blinks before recognition set in. "Fushimi-san?"

Saruhiko's body was walked by the demon towards its other servant. He knelt them down next to the other as they grimaced with pain, extending Saruhiko's hand with a touch more gentle than that hand had likely ever given.

"Doumyoji-kun, how serious are your wounds?"

The faery blinked at the un-Saruhiko like form of address but for now didn't seem to notice the glowing blue lines, still blinking dust from the road out of his eyes. He squirmed about, testing his limbs for breaks as he patted himself down.

"I don't think anything serious got me," he said through gritted teeth. "I managed to dodge those weird bullets." He winced. "What happened to… ?"

"You mustn't concern yourself with such things," Munakata told him. "Rather, I suggest you seek medical attention – and make sure a mage looks over you too, just in case. I had you all added to the Grand Magus's employee Health Scheme."

Saruhiko wished his eyes were his again so he could roll them. Munakata sounded proud of himself there, perhaps a little too much so for doing something so mundane when he could collapse portals to the Void with a wave of his hands.

Although, he had a sense then, like the pride he divined was in the demon's voice (his voice, and he the demon's) was noticed not just in what he heard, but also something that was like a sixth sense, and then again yet more like something he himself had felt – that he'd worked out the labyrinthine human health insurance system in how it related to his own humans.

This connection, being possessed and occupying the same body, same space as another… was it more intertwining that he'd thought?

Could he feel Munakata's feelings now?

Well, this was when Doumyoji's blinking finally stopped and froze his eyes wide open, staring at Saruhiko like he was… very much what he was right now.

"… Captain?" the faery wondered. "Uh, isn't that you in there?"

Munakata didn't toy with him.

"Yes it is, Doumyoji-kun. A measure taken to prevent myself from falling into the Void." He paused. "And Iwafune will answer for what he has compelled me to do."

Yeah, Saruhiko certainly hoped he would. After all it had taken to stop him from being consumed by the Fox, he was now destined to fall into Hell very soon regardless, not to mention was already dead, two things he should have been trying not to think of then and there.

But Doumyoji's response was not of horror at the possession, but rather self-recrimination as he realised –

"I lead you into a trap."

"Better that you were alive to do so than have Iwafune do it after killing you," Munakata said simply. "Neither Fushimi-kun nor I blame you."

"But I - !"

He cut himself off before whatever woe-is-me whining could come out of his mouth, thankfully, but the feeling behind such unspoken words was plain enough on his face, and the most annoying Saruhiko had probably ever found him.

" _Captain_ ," he thought towards the demon, " _can you hurry up and tell him to piss off. We need to find Misa – Iwafune, before he destroys the world or whatever my father's spell is going to trick him into doing._ "

Funny, how until he'd said such words without thinking, the thought hadn't actually occurred to him. Of course Iwafune was an ancient, fearsome angel and Niki was a piece of trash so the concept shouldn't have even been seriously considered, and yet…

That Man.

"I share your concern, Fushimi-kun."

Doumyoji blinked again. "Huh?"

Munakata cleared his throat. "Excuse me Doumyoji-kun, I was talking to Fushimi-kun. He is most adamant that you see yourself to safety, preferably… "

There was a moment there where Saruhiko felt Munakata searching for something, felt it as easily as he felt the demon move his body around, though it was with a sense he almost didn't think he'd ever experienced… until he realised it was a sensitivity to magic.

It was as frustrating that the words didn't exist to describe how different the demon's perception of the supernatural around them was to his. Greater than the difference between colour and black-and-white, even, as though before he'd seen without depth or clarity as well, and now everywhere around him there were signals he couldn't have recognised, except he did. Mid-grade warlock, low-grade warlock, mid-grade, low-grade, low-grade, low-grade Other – probably a common zashiki-warashi – mid-grade warlock, he could tell, and the one supplying that information had to be Munakata.

Then, far, far off towards the north-west of the city, beneath the ground and miles beyond where he stopped being able to discern a single being otherwise, there was a bold and brilliant fire.

This was what Munakata had been looking for.

"… preferably as far south as possible, if I'm correct. Oh, I suppose the Magus and the Guardian should also be informed; I believe Yatogami Kuroh will know the exact location when told there is a place beneath a mountain north-west of here. Be sure to mention it to the Mage who attends to you, Doumyoji-kun."

Ah, so JUNGLE had been hiding out in one of Miwa Ichigen's old 'haunts', no doubt brought to their attention by Yukari. Doumyoji frowned.

"Can you do this for me?" Munakata asked gently. Saruhiko hated to think what that must have looked like coming from himself.

But it seemed to be what Doumyoji needed to nod determinedly, heave himself up – with Munakata's aid – and shake himself off.

"Consider it done, Captain," he said, visibly fighting off a cringe before he limp-ran off with only a brief double-take at the giant hole in the road.

" _You know he's going to go straight to the mages without seeking medical aid, right_?" Saruhiko thought towards his 'guest'.

He felt his own lips' smile grow fonder. "They'll see to him regardless," he said. "We should move."

" _North-west_?" Saruhiko asked, as though he needed an answer. " _I felt what you did there, how did you…_?"

"I am able to find Suoh Mikoto wherever that book has taken him so long as he remains within this world," Munakata told him plainly.

Now, wasn't that interesting? More so, anyway, than the most common thing in the world. Saruhiko jumped on it, and not entirely to take his mind off the other thing.

" _Does that have something to do with what he said about the two of you being twins_?"

"Ah." Munakata smiled. "Indeed it does. And no doubt it has piqued your curiosity, for it is quite a tale."

Saruhiko might have thought initially that Munakata would try to weasel out of telling it, but he had this feeling, and he was almost certain it wasn't a reflection of his own curiosity, that by contrast the demon seemed almost eager to tell, like he'd been waiting for a long time to do so.

"Let me see, where to begin. You know how angels and demons are born, don't you?"

" _Cocoons and recycled matter from their dead fellow angels or demons, and energy spots in the realm of choice. It's the same for both of them_."

"And you are aware of the existence of 'twins'?"

It was something he'd read about after looking up what information he could about the Eternal Guardian over the last few days.

" _Weismann was one_ ," he said. " _Born from a 'double-cluster'_."

Oh yes, he could definitely feel Munakata's emotions. That wave of irritation and… betrayal? – that passed through his mind at those words hadn't come from him alone.

"Yes," said Munakata. "He was. A fact that is not entirely irrelevant to my story."

" _Why do I get the feeling this is going to be an extremely long story_?" Saruhiko asked him, trying to sound bored.

He had the distinct feeling, see, that here and now the knowledge was not going to be immediately useful, and Misaki's fate was still the foremost thing on his mind, since he was trying not to think about his death.

"Hmm," said the cause of said death. "No doubt we will reach the battle before the tale can be told in its entirety."

 Right as usual.

"Unless… Yes. Yes, I think that would work."

" _Huh_?" said Saruhiko, fearing he sounded a lot dumber there than usual.

"Since there is no time to tell you, I shall instead _show_ you."

This time Saruhiko managed to hold back from any moronic-sounding noises of confusion, but wished the cryptic words had indeed not been so clear to him in their meaning that it had allowed him to do so. Because if Munakata was proposing what it sounded like…

Oh, who was Saruhiko kidding? Of course he was.

The memories filled his head a moment later

 

*~*~*

_The sky is purple; dark and light – and for no reason he knows the purple parts; and a wedge of burnt gold-orange cuts through it towards the horizon._

_The sky is never the same; and such is home, in Hell._

_Slowly passing through, the point of that new sky heads over the figure standing on the glassy, blackened ground ahead, who watches it with a frown like it's something he's never seen the like of… and yet something he's none too concerned about all the same. This is the figure Reisi has been drawn to from very far away._

_His hair is scarlet red, his eyes far more gold than that point above their heads, and around his form there is an aura Reisi has never felt nor heard of before. But he knows what the being is. He's filled with something like anticipation; smiles uncontrollably even though he makes it look controlled as is always his way._

_"My, my – an angel in the depths of Hell," he greets._

_The angel turns towards him; says nothing._

_"Are you searching for an enemy the Host has marked for destruction?" Munakata asks him, eager for an answer; excited. "Or are you here to free a human soul, perhaps?"_

_Having no other angel to compare this one to, save one –  disgraced, Reisi cannot quite decide how he might go about seeing which is the case. To his surprise the angel smirks back, and looks most un-angelic as he does._

_"Move on, demon," he drawls – sounding but not looking tired. "Unless you want to end up as so much ash. I wouldn't mind."_

_"No thank you," he replies with all due courtesy. "And it would be irresponsible to let such a suspicious character wander about unchecked. Who can say what unruly scheme is in your mind?"_

_There's no energy in the angel's laugh, but in his eyes there's a fire, and Reisi's wings twitch where they're hidden like the want to reveal themselves._

_"I'm looking for someone," he says._

_Reisi cocks his head, questioning._

_The angel looks out into the distance. "Do you know a guy called 'Iwafune Tenkei'?"_

_Somehow, Reisi is simultaneously surprised and not to hear the name. And there's something else too, like uncertainty that grips him, and he remembers that his wings have felt strange in the past around that man as well._

_He sees no reason to lie though._

_"Yes. He visits here a lot."_

_The angel's eyebrows raise, lips part slightly._

_"Visits you, demon? Why?"_

_No reason._

_"Well, now that you mention it, I don't really know."_

 

*~*~*

 

_Hell is no place for the weak to travel alone, nor for outsiders to go without a guide, and yet the fire-winged angel seems to be taking to it like a duck to water even with Reisi only trailing along behind curiously, occasionally offering helpful comments, which are invariably met with derision._

_It helps, of course, that the angel is extremely powerful, and the threats that do pop out to consume his power just as invariably end up burned away to nothingness._

_It also helps, and Reisi realises this within a day, that Suoh Mikoto is an Angel of Chaos; his exact opposite in every way. He takes the chaos of Hell in his stride, indeed – he barely reacts._

_And he had accepted Reisi's answer concerning Iwafune without question. Further question. That seems strange to Reisi, but perhaps the nature of the angel's mission is such that the questions he may want to ask give certain clues the Host do not want spoken of. Reisi has known since childhood that Iwafune once committed a grave crime in the eyes of the Host – to have been disgraced so – but his own questions about that have been met with little but sad silences from Iwafune and otherwise thwarted in every other corner he's put them._

_He's never heard of an angel come to look for him though._

_"Is Iwafune-san considered 'still at large' amongst your people, angel?" he asks the one he's following, appearing without announcement close behind him as he brushes the dust from his latest attacker off his coat._

_The sky is green, but going back to purple. Somehow that light doesn't seem to touch the angel._

_"You're still stalking me then?" he observes._

_Reisi smiles. "I would refer to it as 'shadowing'. Your presence is quite troubling."_

_"Yeah, you wouldn't want me to upset the peaceful order of Hell, would you?"_

_There's no point to be given there: as chaotic as Hell is it remains just as true that it should not be, (Reisi thinks), and should certainly not be encouraged to grow worse._

_"To my knowledge, Iwafune-san has not upset it simply by visiting from time to time. And I have had cause to find his advice invaluable on occasion."_

_A dark look comes over the angel's face, but then something seems to occur to him, and he cocks his head._

_"You're an Anti-Chaos Demon," he says._

_"Did you only just realise?" Reisi teases._

_The angel rolls his eyes. "Figures. First demon that doesn't just burn up in front of me and it's only the demon equivalent of those stuffy assholes back there."_

_Beyond the disappointment it is now Reisi's turn to realise – the words of the angel are somehow familiar. Not in themselves, nor in their drawling bored tone, nor even in that disappointment that even now, in response to whatever expression he is making, begins to dwindle in the angel's eyes._

_It's something more like an understanding – for someone who calls the place they're from 'there' instead of 'home'._

_But the angel clicks his tongue and breaks eye contact; his molten wings unfurling and causing that same feeling they did when Reisi had first seen them, that lightness in his chest. He takes to the skies, and without thinking – though of course he would never have admitted to such a thing – Reisi lets his own wings have the freedom they've been crying for, and continues to follow this strange creature._

_"Two can play at that game," he calls to the angel, appearing above him just to be extra annoying._

_The angel turns his head with the beginnings of a smirk that Reisi also finds some understanding in, and maybe he and this being are not 'exact opposites' at all._

_But when his wings are seen the look on the angel freezes, and he glides up and hovers in front of him, staring._

_His stare is not that of the other demons' in the land when they see Reisi's wings._

Monster.

Freak.

Abomination.

_He wouldn't have expected it to be, the angel must be used to far more typically 'angelic'-looking wings than his pure, clear glass-like feathers with their blue tinge._

_But there is something in that angel's eyes that's a bit like horror, and this Reisi doesn't understand._

_And yet…_

 

*~*~*

 

_Their first fight lasts just over three days._

_(Reisi had offered to heal a cut taken from one of his many attackers just to be polite. Honestly, he doesn't know what that angel was_ expecting _to happen when he'd agreed… )_

_And these are days in Hell, so who knows how long really passed?_

_Lying exhausted next to each other, Reisi is surprised to hear the being just as loathe to move as he is croak out._

_"Oi."_

_He blinks._

_"Oi, demon?"_

_Tiredly, he lifts his pained head, blinks ash from his eyes and pulls a blood-soaked lock of hair behind his ear. He's not sure it's his blood._

_"Are you addressing me, angel?"_

_"What's your name?"_

_Ridiculous._

_That he should hand over such a powerful weapon to this… person, while the wounds they've piled upon one another have not even had the chance to clot._

_But, smiling, he does – and Suoh Mikoto returns the favour._

_Seeing Reisi's memory like this, Saruhiko hears his and Suoh's real names for the first time; names that can't be said or understood by humans._

_Somehow, he doesn't think either suits their owner as much as the ones he knows them by._

 

*~*~*

 

_"What did he do to induce you to this chase, your quarry?"_

_Suoh gives him a look like it's the five millionth time he's asked this question, when Reisi is sure it's more like fifty-seven. But he always evades the answer somehow, and Reisi has the feeling this is more to do with annoying him than it is keeping a secret._

_The angel answers, "How old are you?"_

_Reisi refuses to let the slightest speck of annoyance show. Time is very difficult to measure down in Hell, but a simple enough spell reveals that Reisi is not much younger than Suoh – in fact their ages are so close that Reisi is surprised it's a coincidence they met._

_But it's not the closeness that Suoh takes interest in. It's the 'younger'._

_"And yet I have surpassed one such as yourself so effortlessly," Reisi says, smiling, "and in every facet one could judge us by."_

_Suoh snorts. "Sure you have. But it means you didn't have anything to do with that, so whatever."_

_If he asks what 'that' is, right out as Suoh is trying to lure him into doing (because that has to be what he's doing), then Suoh will evade again. He frowns to himself and instead deduces,_

_"Then 'that' concerns something that happened before you were born, or just about that time – since I doubt one such as yourself has all that much care for what happened to someone else, if being younger than you I could have had nothing to do with it."_

_Again, the angel makes an amused sound, but in his eyes this time there's something that might be sadness, and Reisi wonders if he might not have got it wrong._

_Suoh doesn't address that either though. He only claps slowly and sarcastically. So Reisi deduces again._

_"You are most certainly a full-blooded angel," he observes. "So Iwafune-san cannot be your father. I suppose if I knew more about angels then I'd have had more a better idea of how else another angel could have affected you before you were even born."_

_To his surprise, Suoh laughs, a short and tired sound._

_"Funny you should mention Iwafune 'fathering'. He does have a Nephilim son, or he did." He pauses, eyes averting like something makes him – him of all people – disquieted. "Or he does."_

_Reisi blinks at that strange revelation._

_"Abomination!"_

_But then they're attacked by a six-headed tentacle-dragon, and that kind of puts the conversation on hold._

_This dragon is a fierce one; each of them on their own may have expected an injury dealing with it, but Reisi expects they're both annoyed enough at the interruption that he can rely on Suoh's help for this one, and sure enough the angel rolls his eyes and turns towards the monster, wings unfolding._

_The dragon screams again, "Scum! Blight upon the Abyss!"_

_"Well, demon – looks like you're not the only one that thinks I'm terrible," Suoh says, smirking._

_Reisi cannot let such a misconception stand._

_"I'm afraid our friend was addressing me," he says. "One such as you is entirely beneath its notice."_

_Suoh cocks his head instead of smirking more, and that gives Reisi pause, like he'd bothered the angel when he'd meant to entertain him. Of course, while Suoh understands that Reisi is out of place among his own people as he is, he does not yet fully understand the scope of that._

_It's not just about him being an anti-chaos demon._

_He spreads his wings to show why._

_The dragon hisses and spits a stream of acid that a semi-advanced barrier barely deflects, even as Suoh evaporates a side of it with a burst of flame. And spitting, the dragon bellows:_

_"Blasphemy! Blasphemy against the pit of freedom! Get those disgusting things out of the light of Hell, thou freak!"_

_Reisi sighs. "Now, now, I don't go around making remarks about your appearance, dragon-san."_

_"You've made plenty about mine," Suoh reminds him._

_"That's because you look terrible," Reisi says, with a grin that is swiftly returned._

_Refusing to be ignored, the dragon swoops in low and lashes out with barbed tentacles towards the both of them. Reisi phases through the attack while Suoh punches back with a fist engulfed in flames, burning the limb enough to make the creature scream and leap back._

_Or try to. Reisi had anticipated this turn of events as soon as he saw the dragon and prepared a trap below himself that has turned a stretch of the black ground to diamond and ensnared the tentacle the dragon had meant to hit him with. He then flies up to get the higher ground, where Suoh's already headed, their foe still roaring insults now at both of them, but mostly still at Reisi._

_"Huh," says Suoh. "This thing really doesn't like you. Must have met you before."_

_"Oh, word of mouth alone may have been enough," Reisi assures him. "Most of my countrymen dislike the fact my wings look more like one of your people's than one of ours."_

_Suoh's eyes narrow._

 

*~*~*

 

_When the dragon is defeated the angel's search continues._

_Reisi doesn't spend every waking moment with him, of course – he has much more important things to do. Hell may have no laws, but the weak must be defended nonetheless, and those who disrupt the territories of those who have managed to gain them and allow others under their protection – these people must be dealt with accordingly._

_"So you're some kind of bounty hunter?" Suoh asks him one time, after he explains where he's been during their most recent time apart. After Suoh had pointedly muttered something about not asking where his demon stalker had been, but then Reisi can't help it if most of what he hears when Suoh opens his mouth is 'duuuuuuuhhhhh'._

_"That is an uncouth and vulgar description of my calling," he replies. "I do not collect 'bounties' for my work; order cannot be simply bought."_

_"Oh, so you're more like a complete idiot hunter then?"_

_"And I have found the most complete of them all right here, it seems."_

_Suoh rolls his eyes, but he's still smirking. And then, out of the blue, he asks –_

_"So, I could ask you to find Iwafune Tenkei for me, for free, and you'd do it for the sake of order?"_

_This is not something that has not crossed Reisi's mind. But he's never thought someone like Suoh would actually ask. Still, he's surprised even more by the… elation, enough so that a long pause goes by before he finds the words for a reply._

_"Well, if it removed a person such as yourself from these lands I suppose it could only help restore order… but I wouldn't do it if I didn't know whether doing so would only bring more chaos in the long run."_

_The golden eyes narrow, their intensity bleeding through harsher._

_"What is your relationship with Iwafune, anyhow?"_

_Reisi has thought much about this in recent times. The more he thinks, the less content he is with the answer._

_"He has been something of a mentor, I suppose you'd say – if a distant one. I've known him since I can remember. There are few anti-chaos demons and the nature of Hell does not lend to bring us close together; even when we do meet… " they liked him little more than other demons, he does not say, instead continuing, "Disgraced angels are far more congenial, though unlike the majority Iwafune-san is not affiliated with the Prince. He seeks me out whenever he's here."_

_(Within this memory there is a second, briefer flash of something almost no more than a feeling; a figure standing behind him, casting a shadow of smoke-like wings, and the thought that it was nice to be able to turn one's back to another and not expect a dagger in it)_

_This troubles Suoh, visibly._

_"What do you talk about?"_

_"My goals – for the future. Ideally I'd like to rule all of Hell one day to bring various warring factions to peace, but philosophically speaking I don't see eye to eye with the Prince and with his power standing in my way this makes the venture tricky. I've thought it might make more sense to infiltrate and gain dominion over Earth – and if that works out I'd take another look at the other realms. This is all very far in the future, of course."_

_There's a very long pause after that._

_"… well. I suppose this is what those old farts meant when they said I had no ambition in life."_

_"You mean, you_ don't _hope to rule over the seven realms one day?"_

_The joke leaves them in companionable silence, until Suoh breaks it with:_

_"I was a twin, you know."_

_(He uses the real term, not 'twin')_

_"Really?" Reisi asks. He doesn't think Suoh will flip out if he asks the obvious. "And did Iwafune-san kill your twin?"_

_The angel shrugs. "Don't know. Wasn't supposed to know I was a twin at all, but I heard some of the others talk about it. Thought the way I felt was because of the Chaos thing, and maybe it is."_

_He doesn't elaborate on 'the way I felt', but Reisi thinks he doesn't have to._

_"Anyway," Suoh says, "Apparently I grew in a double cluster, and the reason I never knew about it has something to do with Iwafune, and Adolf Weismann."_

_Reisi feels his eyes go wide. Few people in the universe don't know that second name._

_"Weismann?" he repeats. "What would he have to… "_

_Suoh shrugs._

_"Don't know. Bastard managed to evade me. I'm hoping Iwafune won't run away so fast."_

 

*~*~*

 

_Iwafune Tenkei is very good at running away._

 

*~*~*

 

_Years pass. Eventually the angel goes to Earth to track down his quarry and Reisi doesn't see him for a long time – at times expects he'll never see him again. Unless he was to go looking for him, of course, but what sort of message would that send?_

_Yet Suoh Mikoto and the mystery of his missing twin continue to haunt Reisi's mind as he goes back to his usual pastimes of bringing order to the great abyss; taking commissions from all sorts, including even the Prince – despite their differences. He is more well-disposed towards Reisi than the majority of demons who ask for his help, at any rate. Many see past their aversion to him and his angelic wings enough to make a contract, but they're always visibly happy to be rid of him when the contract is fulfilled._

_And some renege on their end of the deal – not a payment, as he'd once tried to explain to that obtuse angel – but more often a promise, to ensure a certain standard within their territory. They too have to be dealt with._

_It's after one such dealing that he finds something interesting; a trans-dimensional portal key manufactured by his erstwhile client on behalf of one of the Prince's subjects, which documentation – once Reisi has un-burnt it from this demon's fireplace – reveals is a prototype to take its holder directly to the floating palace of the Eternal Guardian._

_Mulling it over for about half a second, Reisi decides it's only right that he uses it himself, so that the Guardian is made aware such devices exist and can protect himself against them._

_And not at all because he might know what happened to Suoh's twin._

_He arrives at the palace with little difficulty, but the journey from there is not without its traps, or shouldn't have been._

_For as soon as he sees the mirrored walls of the chamber he is transported to begin to shift and open snowflake-life and then into cruel looking points no doubt meant to skewer any intruders, he releases his wings on instinct, knowing the Eternal Guardian is no foe he can simply overwhelm without effort._

_And the blades stop, as though he's stunned them, and retract back into the wall._

_"I thought you might come here one day."_

_The Eternal Guardian appears before him for the first time; sliver, ancient and beautiful, and like his mirrors somehow a shifty character, like a reflection a slight misrepresentation of what's actually there._

_Reisi is far too sharp to reveal himself by admitting he is surprised by what this angel – so unlike both Suoh and Iwafune, and yet the natural feeling demons have towards angels boils within him – has said. Inside, his thoughts boil yet more fiercely._

_"The Angel of Chaos Suoh Mikoto told me an interesting story," he says, smiling his default smile._

_Adolf Weismann closes his eyes in a wince._

_"I would have thought the Host would keep him away from Hell for that very reason," he replies, and looks off to the side. "But I suppose they couldn't have kept him from_ you _."_

_One of the hardest things Reisi has ever done has been to keep his expression constant there._

_A part of him…_

_A part of him had known as soon as he'd seen those gold eyes looking back into his for the first time._

_"You managed to keep him from you," he points out, neutrally._

_"I couldn't bear to face him," Weismann says, with an embarrassed smile and a shrug. "I am the one who plucked his cocoon from its bearings and replanted it, away from its partner." He looks away again. "And though I was manipulated into it… Well. It was my selfishness that allowed that manipulation."_

_Wait._

Suoh _… was the one who was removed? Reisi is confused, but he knows he must continue to feign comprehension so that Weismann reveals the truth. He waits, allows Weismann to accept more rope._

_"After my own twin's death, the pain… well. I suppose I can't say you can't imagine it, but then again it's different for everyone. That pain… when Iwafune presented me with the report that said the outlook was so bad if an Angel of Chaos was allowed to develop as a twin to a regular angel… when I thought I could do something to prevent such a miserable future…"_

_"You ordered Suoh Mikoto's cocoon to be removed and replanted in another energy spot," Reisi finishes._

_To remove a cocoon from where it has formed and replant it is dangerous – Suoh could easily have died before he'd had a chance to live, and Iwafune's prediction must have been dire indeed if it convinced Weismann to order the removal._

_Now he thinks about it, remembering how old Suoh is from that spell they did all that time ago, it must have been about the same time as Suoh's birth that Weismann finally became a complete recluse from the world, in his floating palace. He curses himself for knowing Weismann had been involved all this time and never thinking there was a connection._

_But this is all good information for Suoh –_ for himself? No, he can't begin to process that _– so even a minute more of speaking to this being –_

_An alarm sounds._

_Weismann looks at him sharply._

_"Did you and Suoh decide to confront Iwafune and I at the same time!?" he cries._

_Reisi's eyes narrow. "You may be assured I have no say in what he gets up to. But if he has found Iwafune-san – "_

_" – then he'll also have found Hisui Nagare. And Hisui's energy levels… we have to stop them at once!" The angel stands and rushes towards him._

_This sudden change throws Reisi off guard and he breaks his knowing character._

_"Who is Hisui Nagare?"_

_Weismann looks at him sharply, grabs his wrist._

_"What do you know about cross-dimensional transmogrification?"_

 

*~*~*

 

_The four players meet on Earth, less than a mile from what will one day be Tokyo._

_And there's a fifth there too. As much as a dead person can be there._

_(Saruhiko may also be dead, but he's human, so it's different)_

_Hisui Nagare, what's left of him – the human fraction of what was once a man with a cask of memory stitched into his form – is contained within a large doll in this memory, painted wood and cloth. He can barely move, and that's somehow worse than it would have been if the doll was up and dancing or totally immobile._

_Suoh is looking at the doll with disinterested scorn, which Reisi guesses means he hasn't yet discovered the truth that Reisi – or a part of him – now believes._

_"I see you're still stalking me, demon," he says. This time Reisi can't quite decipher his tone. "Suppose it's difficult for you to find someone else to lecture without them dying of boredom."_

_Well, of all the nerve…_

_"Suoh, get away from him!" Weismann cries._

_And, in case Suoh hadn't guessed who this interloper was –_

_"Weismann," says Iwafune. "Of course."_

_He laughs, but the laughter is desperate, as is the look in his eyes. The doll in his arms slowly turns its head towards the angel._

_"Suoh," Weismann says again, for Suoh himself has only ignored him except to get a single second look when his identity had been revealed, then dismiss him. "You have to understand, if Hisui releases the toxic energy he's stored up now, the damage will not only destroy the nearest city, but dozens of surrounding human settlements! We have to take this somewhere else!"_

_"Take what?" says Suoh. "We're just talking."_

_Iwafune shakes his head, sadly._

_"You, Suoh, came here just to talk? But Reisi-kun is with you, so you obviously know the truth. And why not? I admit it. I had an idea and I needed to test it; I tricked Weismann into removing your cocoon knowing that the operation would be given such care by the tenders of the birthing grounds that the other cocoon would be all but unguarded, and it being unguarded, I stole it."_

Aha, _Reisi thinks, seeing where this is going._ Yes, it explains a lot _._

_"The matter of angels and demons is inverse to one another, so many of the same patterns in their make-up except reflected, and with matter still coalescing into a soul being so malleable, it made sense that I'd be able to turn an unformed angel into an unformed demon!"_

_"Iwafune, stop – " Weismann tries to tell him, but is cut off._

_Suoh's gaze is piercing. "Shut the fuck up," he hisses._

_Iwafune has taken several deep breaths, like this is upsetting him more than Suoh (or Reisi) and he laughs despairingly._

_"But the methods I used refused to take hold," he explains. "The cocoon itself remained of heaven, and the small amount of soul that had already gathered, but the demonic soul matter that was drawn in from the birthing ground in Hell remained demonic – adapted to accept the angelic matter, but never mingled with it."_

_He looks at Reisi, smiling like a lunatic._

_"That's why only your_ wings _are of the First realm, Reisi-kun. Even fused into your body as they are, they're not the same as the rest of you. You are just another demon."_

_…_

_Really, he supposes he's always known. Supposes he's never had the courage to admit it, that it's no accident his wings 'look' like an angel's, that many of the denizens of Hell have probably sensed it too, indeed many of them probably knew all along and saw no reason to tell him._

_It's always so chaotic down there, after all._

_Suoh blinks and double-takes, whirling around to look at him with , "What – him? He's my - !?"_

_Then from Weismann, "Wait, you didn't know? But I thought you said…"_

_"And you're the one who let this happen!?" he growls at Weismann, before turning back to scowl furiously at Iwafune. "You'd better take this chance to get the fuck out of here then, guardian – I see you again and I'm going to make charcoal pens out of your skeleton!"_

_The doll's head turns again._

_"Father. Shall I dispose of them?"_

_With a sad sigh, Iwafune's eyes meet Reisi, meet him with the same guilt they've always had before him, finally recognised for what it is, and yet despite that feeling he answers:_

_"I'm afraid it looks like we'll have to, Nagare."_

_Suoh leaps forward, a firestorm._

_Honestly, Reisi anticipates that once he's processed this he'll want to join Suoh in his charge._

_"_ Freak."

"Abomination."

"Monster."

_But Weismann's warning remains in his mind yet. The human settlements are in jeopardy, and such disorder as their destruction would bring if Hisui countered the attack cannot be tolerated._

_Using the same portal key he had to infiltrate Weismann's palace, Reisi darts after Suoh, grabs him by the shoulder above his wing – burns – and pulls him down into Hell._

_They fall like a meteorite._

_They crash._

_Suoh looks at him with such rage, such power, that he's surprised that through its fire he can know that the fury is not for him._

_Still, the fight that ensues lasts a lot longer than three days._

_And he doesn't see Suoh after that for almost half a millennium._

 

*~*~*

_So he waits._

 

*~*~*

 

"We're here."

The memories had 'downloaded' fully, in the same few moments it had taken Munakata to transport them to… wherever they were. Such a bombardment of revelations about his overlord, and seeing it through his eyes, and knowing him – even with so much left unsaid about the aftermath of everything – was hard for Saruhiko to take his mind off.

But then Munakata made their eyes focus on the scene before them; Iwafune Tenkei staggering under the light of the hole in the roof of the cavern with a bird on his shoulder, the unconscious bodies on the ground before him, Kusanagi lowering a whimpering, bleeding Totsuka onto his side – red flowing between his fingers. Anna with hers a vice around the edge of Suoh's coat and Suoh stood blank with shock.

Misaki…

Misaki was standing in the midst of all of it, and he turned around with a familiar grin.

"Heh, heh, heh," he laughed. "Surprise, son!"

Now that – that felt more like death than dying had.

 

 

 

*~*~*

 


End file.
